The Subway Diaries
by Owai
Summary: The city is cold and empty, and the subway runs through it. In a world where the city lights blind you to everything real, Uchiha Sasuke tries to impress an empire, and meets a boy running from his own. AU. [SasuNeji]
1. Chapter 1

**The Subway Diaries (** 1/?** )  
****By; **Owai

**Summary; **The city is cold and empty, and the subway runs through it. In a world where the city lights blind you to everything real, Uchiha Sasuke tries to impress an empire, and meets a boy running from his own. AU.

---

The rain was streaking his hair when he finally diverged from it and into the noisy underground, soaked shoes slipping slightly on tile. The storm had hit suddenly, warning not evident to Sasuke's preoccupied mind even in clouds and lightning that had streaked the dark sky shades of bruised purple and blue. He irritably shook his dark coat, lifting it from his shoulders and sending splatters of rain to the ground and side wall as he descended the several flights of stairs that led to the city subway, packed to the brim with salarymen and students alike. They seemed to scatter under his gaze, each face turning away under the bright lighting that gave everything a slightly blue tinge, throwing shadows and creases where there should be none.

He hated the subway.

It seemed to rule life here in the city, however. Each stop planned on a map somewhere, implanted in conductor's minds, drawn on every corner of the subway walls. And even those stops were contracted to a perfect science, not a second wasted on latecomers or mistake, doors shutting as if the train itself had been programmed to close up, barring late-bloomers and second sons from ever reaching their destination.

With a forced sigh, Sasuke slid into the ticket queue behind an elderly woman and her young companion, each lost in a world all their own. Gloved hand clutching their railway passes, the woman stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on a point in the distance that Sasuke was sure she wasn't really seeing. Similarly, the boy beside her was lost in the digital fantasy land of a red game boy, his feet shuffling forward only after the woman gave him a tug closer and closer to the machine that had been positioned to serve as a partitioner between the platform and the train. Sasuke watched dully as the tickets slipped in and under the silver metal plates only to be pushed up once again, as if rejected.

When he had passed through that barrier himself and come out, free on the other side, Sasuke found himself standing idly in wait for the train as he always did, each second dragging him pointlessly from one realm of thought to another. Bumped and jostled by travelers from every side, each in more of a hurry than the last, Sasuke put a hand to the bridge of his nose and squeezed, eyes closing only to open a second later when a rumbling sound announced the arrival of his train.

There was a mad dash for the doors that Sasuke forced himself not to become a part of as passengers boarded and unloaded as if mice rushing from the threat of water. With seconds to spare before the doors closed behind him, Sasuke found himself a pole near the back of the train and settled in, dropping his shoulders and pushing a hand into his pocket.

"Hey kid," a voice cracked somewhere to Sasuke's right--a voice which he ignored until it spoke up again, a moment later, "kid."

"What do you want, Oji-san?" Sasuke asked, his voice succinct as he turned his eyes to the old man that was pressed against the window, his breath making foggy shapes on the glass. The man's attire was ragged: brown coat faded to grey from cigarette ash and overuse, feet (half-curled beneath him) clad in ragged shoes that had seen better days. Sasuke almost knew what the man was going to ask even before he voiced it.

"Gotta light?"

Sasuke let out an irritated groan, eyes flickering to the no smoking sign placed just above the man's head. With no further preamble, he turned away, shoulders hunched forward as he turned toward the front of the car just as it slid to a halt at the next stop.

The platform was nearly empty here, a stop that Sasuke recognized immediately but didn't care to place in his mind as his eyes shifted out one of the windows to the "crowd" that waited on the platform. Two figures, each with umbrellas and one with a hat waited patiently until the passengers had cleared before boarding. As they came into the light of the car, Sasuke's eyes moved to digest and dismiss them, first landing on the elderly of the two--filing away his dark grey hat and moustache into some facet of memory--and then to the younger, clearly not a companion.

It wasn't the boy's face that stayed Sasuke's eyes (for of that there was no glimpse), but his mannerisms that were strangely apparent and quite different from the rest of those in the car. Shoulders back and proud despite the modest dress, though the dark head was bent slightly toward the floor, as if hiding or...Sasuke smirked to himself. No. He was reading a book. Reading and looking nowhere else, not even to find a seat or a handhold as the train lurched forward once more, sending long, dark hair wavering from side to side. The telltale swing of a white cord gave away the presence of earpieces, and further, clipped to a belt loop, an iPod.

Letting out a soft snort of amusement (though unsure of why), Sasuke turned his attention to the hand he had wrapped around the supporting pole, gaze drifting down in empty thought for a moment before his eyes once again pursued their mark in the reading young man. Quite opposite from the bent head that had become strangely embedded in his mind, Sasuke was instead met head on with an even stare, as if the other had sensed his invasive scrutiny and set a defense.

Sasuke's gaze did not divert, instead stayed unwavering a moment longer on the eyes that met his own. A shade strangely light for one of obviously Asian descent--almost too light, though Sasuke was certain that the pale, hueless glow was no result of blindness. And then interlocked eyes disengaged, Sasuke's dark ones sweeping across pale, handsome features and memorizing them, for what end he was uncertain. They traveled down the slender neck and narrow frame, took in the outline of a body well-encased by clothing that tried too hard to look inexpensive, and then once again ascended. He was met by a blank expression, empty as if perfectly crafted from marble. And then it changed, slowly blossoming into amusement as one slender eyebrow lifted.

_Touché _, Sasuke thought, taking a step forward as the train once again jerked, losing acceleration.

The object of his attention lowered his eyes, dark lashes nearly brushing white skin before Sasuke realized what he was doing, why he was moving forward in pursuit of a whim. And suddenly all at once it seemed as if a bookmark had shifted against pristine white pages and a crowd had gathered, blocking the boy from view. The throng of passengers quickly dispersed as the doors retracted into the wall, leaving only an empty space where the other had been. Before he knew it, Sasuke's feet were carrying him down the train car, sending him bursting onto the platform, eyes searching.

Crowds parted and surged, but there was no glimpse of the figure he had seen on the train.

Breathing heavily from anticipation, Sasuke realized with a curse that he was going to be late.

---

"I dunno, he's kinda weird. Don't you think that's kinda weird?"

"What's weird?" The sound of liquid splashing nearby turned the table of heads, each set of eyes taking in the scene with varying degrees of interest. There was a moment's pause as a large-breasted woman stalked out of the club, discarding her empty shot glass on her way past the bar, wet companion fuming after her. Eyes slowly returned to their original resting place, a blond in loud colors that was gesticulating wildly with a beer bottle.

"Just showing up like that! Just moving in and sleeping for days, not saying a word on where he's from or...you know, anything. Plus, the bandages." Uzumaki Naruto's eyes squinted suspiciously, more than part of him convinced that the boy who had shown up on his doorstep four days before was either some kind of mental case–or a leper.

"Bandages?" The only girl in the circle asked, sipping at a drink as pink as her hair through a straw a shade darker. "Maybe he's sick."

Haruno Sakura worked as a receptionist at a doctor's office. Naruto had the distinct impression that she knew what she was talking about.

"Sick?" Her blond companion returned, looking around the circle of faces before bearing down on one in particular. "Ne, ne, Kiba--what would a guy wear bandages around his forehead for?"

"I dunno." Kiba said, shrugging his shoulders half-drunkenly. "Maybe he got the shit kicked out of him." The Inuzuka was currently draped halfway over the table next to his sleeping companion, Nara Shikamaru. He looked about ready to pass out, but Kiba always got a second wind.

Naruto sighed. "He doesn't look like that kind of guy, yanno?"

"_What _kind of guy?" Sakura piped in again, "Look, why don't you just invite him out with us next week, and you can _ask_ him about the bandages."

Naruto began to nod slowly, his agreement gaining momentum. Sakura looked pleased with herself, and went back to drinking. She would be totally smashed by the end of the glass and probably on the dance floor moments later. Naruto stopped shaking his head abruptly.

"He doesn't look like that kind of guy." He repeated, drawing groans from around the table–even from the sleeping Shikamaru.

"Dude, have you even _talked _to him?" Kiba asked, looking as if raising his head were too much of an effort. Naruto knew that Kiba would _also _be on the dance floor, fully energized, in a quarter hour.

"Hey, where's Ino?" Sakura interrupted, pink head swiveling from side to side.

"Hey, where's Sasuke-bastard!?" Naruto yelled with much more enthusiasm, jumping up from his seat and wobbling precariously.

"Right behind you, moron." A helping hand gave a push and Naruto ended up with his face planted in the middle of the table. "Tch. It's barely past seven and you're already smashed?" So Naruto'd had a few beers. A few over five. He'd make a New Year's resolution to drink less. It wasn't like he could help it. Turning twenty had opened multitudes of possibilities for him–alcohol was the least of it. Play hard and die exhausted, right?

Pulling himself off of the table (with a good shove in the right direction from Kiba), Naruto rounded on Sasuke and poked a finger meant for the other boy's chest, just over Sasuke's right shoulder.

"Hey. You're...late." Naruto efforted.

"Che." Sasuke responded, crossing his arms over his chest. He was...what was he? Wet? Naruto squinted, trying to think through the noise of the background music and the crowd below, on the dance floor. "The train was late."

"What!" Naruto yelped, the fact that Sasuke had a reasonable excuse somehow vexing him, "Why're you all wet?!"

"Naruto! Stop giving Sasuke-kun the third-degree." Sakura said from the table, pink brows creased in irritation that always seemed to manifest in these situation. In any situation involving the three of them, really.

"It's called a _rain_, dumbass. Go outside lately?" Sasuke answered anyway, giving Naruto the vague notion that he should just jump on the bastard and shut him up for good. That thought went swiftly out the window, however, as his eyes trailed over the bar and down to the dance floor.

Who was _that_?

"We'll finish this later, bastard." Another attempted jab at the taller boy's chest, and Naruto pushed past him clumsily and contemplated how to effort the stairs down to the floor.

The rest of the table slowly began to clear, leaving Sasuke still standing in the same position, eyes directed toward the surging crowd below. Shikamaru had raised his head, finished off Naruto's discarded beer, and stood to stretch. Without looking at the latecomer, he simply walked past him, arms behind his head as if too lazy to slip out of the relaxed position.

"Train's never late." He observed, walking past.

Sasuke said nothing.

---

Ino, as it had turned out, was stashed in a corner, arms curled around some man that looked like he could have belonged to a grid iron gang or the farmer's union. Naruto knew this because he'd bumped into her on his second trip around the dance floor–the slap she'd landed was still screaming infidelities against his cheek when he finally let himself into his apartment more than five hours later.

As he felt around for the light switch, fingers tracing everything from air to wood to the ripped leather of his hand-me-down couch, Naruto kept his eyes on the curious glow that came from beneath the his new roommate's closed door. When his fingers finally hit something solid and properly light switch shaped, his world was filled with illumination.

It hurt. And it was messy.

"Augh!" Naruto promptly tripped over the shirt he'd discarded that morning, his face meeting the floor for what wasn't the first time that night. The two of them were getting very acquainted–Naruto and the floor. Lifting his head painfully, Naruto let out a groan and tried to replenish the air that he'd so suddenly lost from his lungs. Perhaps he should clean up a bit; he wasn't living alone anymore and...quite frankly, it was somewhat embarrassing to realize that your dirty underwear was hanging from one of the lampshades in the living room. He wondered if the guy had even noticed though, after the (albeit very short) interview, Naruto hadn't seen the other man emerge from his room for days.

He hoped he wasn't dead or anything. Sniffing the air, however, only established that he'd forgotten to take the trash out again and (this one was a bit harder) that there was a bowl of half-eaten ramen sitting on the kitchen counter.

Yeah, he really needed to clean up a bit.

Instead of moving to do so, however, Naruto slowly pulled himself to his feet again and kicked the shirt that had been his downfall across the room. It hooked artfully on the doorknob of his own bedroom and stayed there, proving that, even while drunk, he was still awesome in ways that didn't matter.

Walking now seemed to take less effort than it had hours before, though the pounding in Naruto's head appeared to be getting worse with every step taken. It didn't help that the entire room was filled with rogue items inclined against him and ready to take him out at any misstep, so when Naruto finally made it to his roommate's door, he felt rather proud of himself.

He knocked for ceremony and pushed the door open.

"Hey–_ Hey _you got stuff!" Naruto felt his eyes widen. When he'd shown up to claim what he had signed the papers for, Neji had had with him a single messenger bag and nothing else. No futon, no clothing save for what was on his back, and certainly none of _this_. The room was now furnished and decorated sparsely, each living necessity painstakingly organized in a way that part of Naruto was just itching to tear apart.

"Did you need something." Neji's voice said, drawing Naruto's eyes away from a shelf of CDs.

He was sitting at a low table with a silver laptop and a cup of tea. His long, dark hair was tied neatly into a high ponytail, and it looked as if he'd begun to wind-down for the night–early morning. Not that Naruto was under any sort of impression that Neji could _wind down_. He'd looked oddly flighty on their first meeting, drawn and stretched taut as if he'd seen one too many Starbucks lines. Now, while seemingly much more in his element, the other boy still seemed severe. _Not_ someone Naruto would have chosen for a roommate.

But Neji had produced the money that had been needed to cover rent, where Naruto was severely lacking. Produced it from a _giant wad _of cash that, as far as Naruto was concerned, fell into the same category of _weird _as the fact that the light-skinned boy had bandages tied around his forehead. Maybe it was some kind of bizarre fashion statement, though Neji didn't really look much like he cared about fashion. Part of Naruto hoped it had something to do with an underground drug ring, but Neji didn't look like that kind of fellow, either.

"Oh. Uh...yeah. I kinda need to unwind–" Sober up, "you wanna get some coffee or something?" Naruto replied eventually, wondering distractedly how Neji managed to look so inhumanly _clean_.

"It's two in the morning." Neji stated, his calm voice somehow offending Naruto's sensibilities. Or lack thereof.

"Well...yeah." Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head to grin widely at the other, who peered at him through a strangely blank gaze. The first time he'd seen that look, it had unsettled him. This was the second time, and it still did.

"...All right."

He didn't expect _that_.

Naruto's grin widened impossibly. "Really?!" The half-jump that seemed to come naturally almost sent him to the floor and left Neji staring at him in no impressed fashion. "Great! I know a place. It's just around the corner and they sell _great _ramen."

"I thought you said you wanted coffee," Neji muttered, presumably to himself before he rose to his feet so seamlessly that Naruto wondered if someone had slipped something into his drink again. A blink later the illusion of perfection was gone as Neji pulled on a dark coat.

"Yeah. Ramen's the side dish." Naruto explained as if it were something Neji should already know. The dark haired boy, however, said nothing, simply raised an eyebrow and slipped out of the room.

After wrestling with his shoes for what seemed like an eternity, Naruto led Neji into the dark, damp night and haphazardly down the sidewalk, finding himself slightly more directionally challenged than what was natural. Despite several dangerous dips into the road and almost falling twice into his companion, Naruto seemed to get a grip on sobriety just in time to point out the small diner that he had all but led Neji into.

"This is it!" He said to the waitress as she waved them toward a seat, catching Neji's look of mild discontent only as he slipped into the seat across from Naruto, once again caught in a nameless grace that the blonde was certain had to be drug-induced. Immediately flipping up the menu, Naruto went about noisily discussing his options as Neji's eyes wandered around the small establishment like a lost child looking for its mother.

It was a nice place, one that Naruto had memorized from frequency; homey with the baking-pie smell that stayed with you hours after you left. The waitress was short and squat, her chest sitting like a shelf on her belly as she poured rich, dark coffee into cream-colored mugs that never broke (no matter how many times Naruto dropped them). It was the only place that served coffee hot and strong enough for Naruto–the only place nearby that was laid back enough to allow him in for a second visit.

"You a little hung over, honey?" She asked, filling up Naruto's cup and then Neji's, her eyes fixed on the bandage bound boy's clear, white continence as if he were a statue that would neither mind nor notice her staring.

"Trying to catch it before it hits me, 'Ba-san."

"Who's your friend?"

"He's Neji," Naruto said as Neji studiously ignored the woman's gaze. "Can I get some ramen?"

"It's instant this late." The waitress replied, and, at Naruto's shrug, finally disappeared behind the counter. Naruto turned his eyes to Neji in time to see the him delicately lifting the coffee cup to lips already growing red under the unaccustomed heat.

"So, Neji..." Naruto said, watching the other boy quickly turn his attention to the dark street outside the window, apparently disinterested in talking. Naruto, though, had neither been very good at reading or understanding the fine print, and continued blindly forward, softening his words a bit. "Don't say much, do ya?"

Neji said nothing, an answer in itself.

"Heh," Naruto's nervous laugh was forced as he watched Neji watch nothing. There was something so strangely off about this guy that Naruto couldn't even begin to place it, but wanted to. Or at least, the alcohol still tumbling around his blood stream wanted to. He took a sip of coffee and felt it course its burning path through his throat violently, almost wincing at the taste. Naruto imagined the caffeine in the stuff going straight to his head to counteract the headache that was manifesting there. He wondered what Neji was thinking.

"So where'd you come from?" He finally asked, his coffee cup somehow making a much larger clanking noise on the table than Neji's had.

"What?"

"Geez, man. You're somewhere deep. I said, 'where'd you come from?'" Naruto was well aware that he made some people uncomfortable. Neji just looked downright on edge. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." Neji responded, once again taking his mug into his hands.

"Well?" The blonde prompted once more, wondering if Neji was trying to evade the question. He was pleased when the other's mouth opened after a long pause which involved a lot of blank staring and a strange sense of condescension.

"I've spent my whole life at sea. Shipwrecked on the coast about a month ago; it took me that long to get here. Hitchhiked the whole way." Neji breathed quietly, sipping once again at his coffee as he watched Naruto with no expression at all. The delivery was seamless. The words, entirely unbelievable.

Naruto's gaze wavered as he uttered a soft noise of awe.

"A-and the bandages?" He said thickly, hands spread wide on the table, vision darkening with each rapid succession of blinks.

"They keep my brain from leaking." Neji responded patiently.

"Wh–you lying bastard!" Naruto yelled, realizing that his gullibility had been once again taken for granted. Jumping up from the table, his face soured in righteous anger, only knocked down a notch by the headache that throbbed in his temples. He quickly found his seat again and sighed, leaning against the table as he put a finger in his coffee, elation and anger fully shut down at Neji's bored expression and his own body's inhibitions. "Bastard." He repeated.

"Did you expect an honest answer." The boy across from Naruto said, voice serene, gaze half-lidded. Naruto blinked.

"Uh, yeah." His knuckles knocked against the table, eyes narrowing in suspicion as Neji's eyebrows rose.

"Really. After I'd shown up to your apartment without any possessions and a wad of cash bigger than your fist." There seemed to be no questioning in his voice, only the sheer innocence of a cat playing with a mouse. "Even after I'd slept for almost three days straight. Such strange behavior...It seems a little odd to me that you would ask–and expect something honest after all that."

Naruto blinked again, more painfully this time. Neji was practically admitting that there was something strange about him and–who did that? Not like Naruto i hadn't /I noticed the oddness, but this wasn't how the story went. The victim did not out the detective.

"Mind your own business." These words were icy, deadly like a cobra strike where the others had been only mildly insulting. As if to say, _Yes, I have a secret. You'd best not try and uncover it._

They seemed to fit Neji much more properly than the sarcastic tones that the dark haired boy seemed to have been experimenting with moments earlier. And when Naruto looked into Neji's eyes, he found them oddly blank. It forced a shiver up his spine; a cold warning.

His ramen arrived. It steamed before him for a long moment before he nodded, watching his reflection in identical icy pools across the table.

Naruto suddenly found himself quite sober.

---

Sunlight raked across Neji's vision, loud and infringing like the distant hum of a car motor outside his window. Rolling over on his futon, he reached for the sleek alarm clock that he'd boughten the day before and stared blearily at the time–it was barely past eleven. Without stretching, he sat up and pushed a hand through sleep-mussed hair, breathing out in past-due irritation at the hour.

He could hear Naruto making some kind of disaster in the kitchen, and dressed and groomed to the harmonious sounds of pots and pans clanking with the additional high-pitched yelp filtering through his closed bedroom door.

Neji had arrived in this part of the city nearly two weeks earlier. Stop after stop, and finally the subway had led him into a different world–the same city, but with a different culture. Konoha was large and old, but this part of the city was new and thriving; easy to get lost in, an easy place to have no name.

He didn't trust it, though. Despite the miles he'd put between himself and the home he had left behind, Neji had no love for any place with so many people. He'd spent two weeks alone–a different hotel every night, a different name every day. Testing, trying. Attempting to see if this would be it, if this part of the city would hold him. So far, it had proven its worth. Even the blonde in the kitchen had surrendered to Neji's icy glare of anonymity, and that was the largest hurdle. If he could live with this boy and maintain his life apart...

A heavy shudder thrummed through the apartment.

Neji slipped a hair tie around his wrist and opened his door, eyes flickering about the living in a crude assessment before he stepped across the threshold. It appeared that Naruto had at least attempted to clean up his world of filth–either that, or was transferring it into the kitchen.

"What are you doing." Neji asked, leaning against an outcropping of wall as Naruto balanced precariously on a stool that had clearly seen one too many falls.

"Breakfast!" The blonde exclaimed, as if that answered anything. Neji raised an eyebrow and looked around the room, which appeared to be splattered with a mixture of inedible resources–raw eggs, uncooked pancake batter, uncooked pancake _mix_...

Definitely not worth waiting to poison himself.

"Hey–hey, you want some?"

"No." Neji said, turning and taking his jacket from where he'd left it after their ramen escapade the night before. Something clattered behind him and he heard Naruto jump off the stool.

"Where're you gonna go?"

As he moved to the door, Neji didn't bother answering. Teaching children was very much like this. They didn't often understand a lesson until it was put into practice. Minding one's own business, then, was not innate. It was learned.

Neji reached for the door and found the handle already turning in his hand. It opened before he even had a chance to pull, and instead of being faced with a sunny day, he was faced with dark eyes set in a pale face that Neji couldn't place, but which was not entirely foreign. He didn't know anyone here.

The eyes widened slightly before narrowing in obvious recognition.

_Shit,_ Neji thought.

Checkmate already.

---


	2. Chapter 2

**The Subway Diaries (** 2/? **)  
****By; **Owai  
**Rated;** R  
**Summary; **The city is cold and empty, and the subway runs through it. In a world where the city lights blind you to everything real, Uchiha Sasuke tries to impress an empire, and meets a boy running from his own. AU.

---

It was the phone that had awoken Sasuke, its vibrations humming a sleepy annoyance into his consciousness as it danced erratically on the bedside table. It took effort to untangle his arms from the sheets that were wrapped precariously around his body, and only after he had reached for and dropped the cell did he notice the tingling sensation in his fingers, an allusion to the dazed night before that he only half-remembered.

When he finally got his hands on the elusive device, the caller ID flashed its warning and Sasuke hit the ignore button before he dropped it once more, i _Sakura /i _still blinking on the screen.

The mass of blankets to Sasuke's right convulsed, sweet morning mumbles falling like a cacophony of irritation on his ears as he sat up, back to the sunlight that was streaming in unblocked windows.

"Morning, lover."

How quaint. _Lover_. Sasuke smirked to himself, a rueful smile that held no real humor but only a strong sense of annoyance and what one could only describe as pity. _Pathetic._

He didn't bother to hide his nakedness as he rose from the bed and walked to the dresser, brushing a white bra to the floor as he pulled a clean pair of boxers from the top drawer. Thin, cold hands slipped over his biceps from behind and brushed against his chest, something—he supposed—he was supposed to find erotic. One of his hands caught what had been misplaced swiftly and he turned with no real sense of haste.

"Who are you, again?"

There was a flash of hurt across blue eyes—women couldn't hide it as easily when he brutally cut them down—and a pout at full lips, one that Sasuke was sure would have worked on anyone that was interested. He wasn't. She was blonde and petite and naked as the day she had been born beneath that sheet but she'd already sucked him dry and Sasuke didn't like repeats.

"I'm the one you burst your swimmers for twice, honey." Her voice was as sour as a lemon, and her hands dropped immediately to her sides.

"Let me let you in on a secret—" Sasuke said as he pulled a shirt over his head and rooted around with his foot for the pants that he'd discarded the night before, "It isn't hard to make a man blow his load. I thought that was the first lesson they taught you at Quick 'n Easy University."

His ears were met with an insulted huff and the slam of a door a moment later. His favorite sheets ripped a trail of scorn down the stairs outside his loft, and Sasuke let out a belated growl as he went to collect the remains.

It wasn't as if his day were about to get any better, he realized. A transition through the packed subway, a stop to pick Naruto up at his Deathstar of Disaster, and Sasuke was off to buy books for school that he had never wanted to attend in the first place. Just another disappointment for himself and his father in a world i full /I of disappointments.

And the subway _was _packed.

Sasuke shifted uncomfortably between a man with a poorly disguised toupee and a woman with a handbag the size of a five year old child. He'd ended up near the back of the car again, and even though newly-manifested claustrophobia was encroaching, Sasuke still managed to keep an eye out for the platform of the boy with ghostly eyes and a face that was equally haunting.

He wasn't there, though–only a slow trickle of passengers and not even the man with the moustache to hint that this was the right stop. But it_ was_ the right stop, Sasuke realized– _his _stop, and it was with a curse and a mad squeeze for the door that he only just managed to not get clipped by the jaws of the subway car. Pulling at his jacket as if offended, Sasuke muttered darkly to the day and took off into the bright sunlight and the oblivion that waited beyond.

---

Naruto's door was unlocked.

He lived in the part of the city that Sasuke preferred to refer to as _The Lesser Half_. It was hardly run-down, but certainly wasn't the Uchiha District, or even upper town. The flowers that lined Naruto's apartment complex were violets—plain and ordinary—and the paint was white and cracked only if you looked up close.

And Naruto left his door unlocked.

It wasn't as if he had anything worth stealing, the blonde had rationalized to Sasuke one day a week after he lost his key and simply stopped using the deadbolt. Shikamaru, who had been lazily listening in had muttered something about privacy, but Sasuke had nullified that point with a quick quip about how Naruto could never get a girl, anyway–even if he _did_ understand the meaning of the word.

It had quickly dissolved into a battle wherein Sasuke matched wits with his unarmed opponent and left Naruto sulking over a bowl of half-eaten ramen.

Naruto's trust in the rest of the city, however ridiculous, did make it easy for Sasuke to let himself in whenever he needed to. More often than not, he found himself asleep on Naruto's couch while the bewiskered boy watched late-night television, Sasuke all too exhausted to wade through the city of expectations his family offered up or just too angry to try. If they wanted him, they only ever sent Itachi (they had their _own_ place, this part of the city went untouched by their multitudes), who was too busy to deal with his little brother most of the time, anyway, and couldn't be bothered to come to a hole-in-the-wall apartment to collect him. Most of the time Sasuke ended up being picked up by a cabby with a note and a grin that spoke of too-due compensation.

The handle gave and there was a shuffle behind the door as it opened, Sasuke's eyes catching the tamed mess of Naruto's living room, his mouth already preparing a degradation before he stumbled on the figure blocking his path.

No fucking way.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed in observation of the face he had seen the day before—the pale continence framed by dark locks, the ivory eyes matching the crisp white bandages meticulously wound around the forehead. Those eyes, widened in shock and what appeared to be a quickly masked sense of fear, narrowed into a defensive glare as Sasuke pulled in the legions of surprise that were wrenching at his body.

What the hell was_ he_ doing here?

It was only a short moment before Sasuke regained control of his expressions and voice—after all, whatever he was reacting to was unwarranted, just the shock of circumstance—and sneered.

"Hey, Sasuke! What the hell, bastard, I thought you said you were gonna be here for breakfast!" Naruto, looking smudged and unkempt, called from the threshold of the kitchen. Sasuke's eyes lingered, predatory on the face of the boy before him a moment longer, Naruto's outburst removing whatever odd traces of what Sasuke could only describe as fear that had been hidden there and wiping the slate of anything but a carefully alluded to challenge.

"I am," Sasuke replied before turning his eyes back to Naruto once more and stepping past the other and out of his shoes. His eyes cleared of the lingering images before them. "It's not like you're ready."

"That's because I was waiting for you, dumbass." Naruto muttered irritably, throwing a sticky, batter-infused dish towel at Sasuke's face, which the Uchiha caught deftly before contact. "Hey, Neji—Neji, wait—you gotta eat—where're you going, anyway? Are you going out to buy books for University? That's where we're going, maybe you could come with."

Sasuke, who had settled himself on the sunken couch, cocked an eyebrow slightly in Naruto's direction before taking the opportunity to further dissect the boy whose mere presence seemed to be mocking him. He looked no more comfortable than the day before, but still carried that promising air of self-confidence.

Neji flashed a glare that was smoldering, and Sasuke felt the corner of his mouth lift slightly into a smirk, a strange sensation waxing through him at the gesture.

"I said no." Neji responded icily, "I've finished with University and don't need books." He turned away again (eyes falling only briefly on Sasuke, though it was long enough) and Sasuke heard him mutter, rather distinctly to the door, "I don't need this," before he disappeared from view behind it.

Naruto huffed with consternation and took his sinking shoulders and expression back into the kitchen. "Bit of an asshole." He muttered, "Not like I'm not used to_ that_ ."

"Tch." Sasuke responded, sinking back into the couch and feigning disinterest as he turned on Naruto's half black and white television set. It murmured in an uncomfortable pitch for a few moments before the sound and picture evened out, lulling Sasuke into a painless state of vegetation. His mind didn't stay suspended for long, however–Naruto's constant crashing from the kitchen made it nearly impossible to keep his thoughts from jumping all over the place in a staccato sonata. There was only one place they were falling, anyway, and that whole endeavor of ignoring that train seemed rather pointless to begin with.

Resolve did very little to staunch the urge to scratch an itch, however.

Sasuke endured it a few moments more before throwing himself off of the dilapidated couch and into the kitchen with a growl. It was a war zone, but at least he could recognize the artillery.

"Who was that guy." His voice demanded over the swish of batter.

"Huh?" Naruto responded automatically, dribbling a creamy line onto a hot pan, "Oh, that was Neji. He's my new roommate. Didn't I tell you last night? I thought I did."

"Obviously not."

"Oh. Well. He is." Naruto shrugged and Sasuke rolled his eyes, leaning on the wall with his arms crossed in a manner that suggested he was waiting for further explanation. Naruto, Captain Oblivious, finally noticed and did a double-take. "Wh-aaaat?" He whined, "I don't know anything else. He just showed up and slept and bought some shit and now he's not here."

"You really are a moron." Sasuke assessed, "Don't you even_ interview_ the people you try to wrangle into paying half your rent?"

"Do _you _interview the girls you pick up at bars to fuck?" Naruto growled, waving a black spatula in the vicinity of Sasuke's face, "It's the same thing without the sex. You can see how much he wants to hang around, I highly doubt he wants to be my buddy."

"Tch. Like you care about any of that shit when you want to butt into people's business." Sasuke responded, eyes narrowing at an accusation that he felt was outside of Naruto's jurisdiction.

"Look, I tried, okay? I don't think he's gonna kill me in my sleep, so I'd like to try and keep him from doing it while I'm awake, too–if you don't mind. Don't know what the hell it is to you." He flipped a burnt pancake and Sasuke returned a promising smirk.

"Not a thing." He said after a moment. And then, "Let's go. I'll take you out to breakfast. I'm not eating that shit."

---

April brought spring, rain and a slew of judgments and ultimatums that left a sour feeling in the pit of Sasuke's stomach.

Expectation seemed to rest in every suggestion, every clipped word, every silence. He felt it most in the lingering glances of his father, for even when Itachi was absent from the family home, he was present in the silence. Brunches with his father became critical assessments of his credentials—this isn't good enough, this school will not prepare you, work harder—words were weapons thrown at Sasuke's back in a moment of weakness where i every /i moment with his father was a moment of weakness.

Sasuke found respite only in his mother. She overlooked his inadequacies—didn't see them at all, in fact—and reminded Sasuke that he was still welcome in his own home and that he would never stop being their son. Of him, they were _proud_.

Such words couldn't staunch the wild competition between himself and Itachi, though—_that_ had been burned into him from too young an age; it was in his blood. It was mostly a one-sided affair nowadays—Itachi was older and had long since proven himself to the world and the family. He didn't need to use Sasuke for his ends anymore, and therefore had no reason to compete with him. For Itachi, Sasuke wasn't even a blip on the radar.

It was Sasuke that demanded his brother find time to beat him into the ground with a precision that was unrivaled by anyone he had ever encountered. Itachi carried out his duties with the deadly stroke of a genius too confident in his abilities. It was cool and calm and everything that Sasuke had only ever tried and failed to mimic to such a degree.

A week into the new school year, one such session found him lying on his back in the family dojo, breaths coming hard and heavy in his chest while stars burst in the back of his eyes. Sasuke could hear Itachi moving around somewhere behind him, gathering his possessions and saying nothing as he readied himself for departure in the way that this room always found them: Sasuke defeated and Itachi victorious. The heart in Sasuke's chest beat in painful recognition of his bent and bruised pride.

"I find you lacking." Itachi's choice of tone was blank and emotionless. Sasuke could barely remember when it had been anything but, and he could almost imagine the image of his father saying the same words. The worthless second son, not even deserving of an ounce of emotion from his perfect brother.

"Tch," It was hard to bring the disdain that was normally so apparent in his voice to the forefront now, in the face of all that he had ever wanted and failed to be. "I appreciate that." The sarcasm fell flat.

"Why are you wasting my time."

It was a ton of bricks ground to sand and syphoned down his throat.

"Why are you wasting _mine_?" Sasuke hissed, sitting up deliberately and snatching a sweaty towel from the floor in order to mop at his brow, "You're not training me, you're not helping me get any better—you're not even trying to _beat_ me—you're just mocking me with every parried blow, like you can't be bothered to even be serious!"

Itachi's face could not have been carved for marble. It lacked the warmth for a carving of even that nature—it was simply a sheer rock ledge that dropped off to eternity. Or maybe just to the dead stop of a suicide plunge.

Sasuke's brother regarded him for a moment before slinging the bag of a week's clothing over his shoulder. This was just one more stop in the line before he could go back to his life.

"You're very foolish, Sasuke." Itachi said, and his voice sounded exasperated. Sasuke recognized it from every time he'd ever asked for training as a child. Every time he'd ever asked for Itachi's secrets. Sometimes, Sasuke thought his family didn't want him to succeed. That they already had their hero in Itachi. (And what a hero, his voice chided, all empty soul and marionette to his father—was that really what Sasuke wanted to become? Every time he saw Itachi he thought—yes. Every time his father found him inadequate, the answer was—yes. It was always _yes_.)

"Tell me something _new_, you bastard!" Sasuke was on his feet in a matter of seconds, and the yell shook the quiet atmosphere like a nuclear bomb. He had been done with worship a long time ago—Sasuke no longer had the energy to love something he had grown to hate. "Don't treat me like I'm not even worth taking the time to come up with a new synonym!"

There was an odd flash behind Itachi's eyes, and Sasuke's feet faltered for a moment before he found himself pressed painfully against the back dojo wall. His eyes widened, thoughts amounting to nothing. When had admiration turned to bitterness? Why hadn't he noticed the anger sneaking up on him?

"You're not trying hard enough. You lack enough i hate /I to beat me, and when you hate me, even desire to _kill _me, it won't be enough. You're too _weak_." The word was spat out like a bitter grape, and Sasuke could feel an invisible hand gripping his heart and squeezing it to death. "But if you want to destroy me—and I can see it in your eyes, brother—channel it into something you can _use_ instead of this ridiculous brand of self-pity."

Itachi released him, and Sasuke suddenly realized just how great the pressure had been.

"I'm done. I'm tired of watching you be so pathetic." Itachi sneered as Sasuke's knees hit the ground, hands soon following. Sasuke heard the door slide shut and let out a strangled groan of frustration that sounded a little bit like shattering glass.

He was tired of it, too.

---

"It's to _relax_. Loosen up. Forget all the crap we learned in classes."

It had been a long week. Subway shock filtered into Neji's hand, his feet, threw his hair into a rhythm that was in opposition to the natural beat of life. The vibrations in the pole that his hand was currently closed around had numbed his elbow and was reminding him that his shoulders ached. The thud of every cross section in the tracks whispered that his feet weren't meant to stand so long. The incessant drone of voices in his ears begged him to get off at the next stop and turn around.

The blonde at his side was blocking the path into the next car.

"By getting drunk and wasting your money." Neji responded tiredly, eyes staring blankly at his reflection in the glass as the dark, inner-subway walls flew past unnoticed.

"It's not wasting it! Aren't you even listening to me?!" The yell ordered several glares, delivered on a silver plate. Or at least Neji imagined it was silver. Everything was silver to him.

"No. I'm responding to my own inner-dialogue aloud."

Naruto snorted. "What does that even _mean_?" He muttered as the car slowed to a stop. "Whatever, you'll enjoy it. You've been working all week, you've gotta be tired. Who _doesn't_ want to relax?"

Neji failed to see how Naruto couldn't follow his own logic. Yes, he was tired. Thus, he would rather be in their apartment, in his room, sleeping. He'd only ever agreed to this because he'd thought it would shut Naruto up.

He was wrong. There _was_ no shutting Naruto up.

Doors retracted into the car walls and Neji and Naruto exited onto a busy platform. Each time he entered the subway, Neji was reminded that life never stopped. It was a constant stream of running from place to place, ruled by a ticking clock, each hand getting closer and closer to twelve. Some things you just couldn't outrun. Neji knew—but he'd become good at running.

They broke into the April night as if out of a jail. The air that hit was cool but heavy, a punishment only a fraction better than the warm, humid air of the world below ground. Neji pushed his hands into his jacket and let out a nonspecific sigh of annoyance. At his side, Naruto seemed to be brimming with poorly-repressed energy. It was leaking like a milk carton in the sun.

The city lights glowed and Neji was blind for a moment before seeing all too well. Headlights lit his face and danced along the wet sidewalk. They threw dark caricatures of his and Naruto's forms against darkened businesses alongside the sidewalk, and it was finally as if Neji's ghosts had materialized. Despite how different this place was, it held a lot of home and he remembered it all too well.

"Hey—" There was a tug on Neji's jacket, and he looked back at Naruto only in time to see the blonde running ahead toward the opening of a darkened alleyway where three nondescript figures shone in the backlighting. "This is it! Come on, Neji!"

Neji's shadow flickered uncertainly, but moved forward at the same, steady pace he did.

"So this is your new roommate? You look kind of sickly." Said a boy to Naruto upon Neji's arrival. He seemed to possess neither manners nor a hairbrush. Neji's response was a gaze that didn't bother lingering.

"Kiba!" A pink-haired, well-dressed girl said as she jabbed the offender in the ribs. "Sorry about him—hi, Neji. I'm Sakura, and this is Ino. The jerk's Kiba." She gestured to a blonde and the boy that had addressed Neji originally.

"Where the heck are Shikamaru and Sasuke? I can't believe that bastard's late again." Naruto huffed, cutting off Neji's reply and crossing his arms while he formed a strange pout with slitted eyes and a rumbling growl.

"Shikamaru had to work again—Sasuke—"

"Tch."

Neji briefly wondered if the disdain and arrogance was warranted, or if the dark boy approaching couldn't be bothered to come up with a personality less abrasive. Upon their previous meeting, Neji himself hadn't been of mind to assess him outside of the drawl and sneer before fleeing—the sharp recognition sending his reflexes into overdrive. He'd been on edge like this for weeks and it was driving him insane.

It would be one month though—one full month before Neji would force himself to relax. Right now, edginess was just good common sense. He was still certain that the other—dark hair and eyes like clotted blood—was somehow familiar.

Neji turned halfway to allow for the approach, but his eyes were hooded and his posture was something like that of a threatened animal. The others mulled around him more or less oblivious.

"Finally," Naruto huffed as if offended by Sasuke's lack of punctuality.

"You just got here, moron, you were five feet in front of me."

"Oh yeah?" Naruto responded, "Trying to get a good look at my ass, were you?"

A collective symphony of groans lit the atmosphere around them, and Neji realized regrettably that his original assessment of Naruto had been correct. He was an untrained dog that wouldn't stop barking.

"Can we just go inside?" Sakura said, bouncing a bit as she snuggled into her jacket. "I'm cold and Ino keeps elbowing me in the ribs."

Amidst the sharp "hey!" and further complaints from Ino, the group shuffled down the alley and came out on a side-street lit by the neon oranges, blues and pinks of a flashing club sign feet above their heads as a thick rhythm beat through their spines. Despite the remoteness, it seemed to be well-visited, and a queue had formed outside the door.

The building went up several stories, and as the others dug about their pockets for I.D.s and extra cash, Neji took the opportunity to take a step back and look _up_.

He felt the blood drain from his face and forced his muscles not to lock up. The sign flashed _Hidoke_ in bold, direct letters. A few centimeters beneath _club & dance_ shone out softly next to a twisted emblem that Neji recognized all too easily, even as it was disguised as a sun. His forehead beneath the bandages prickled.

"—Neji, come on."

It was Naruto's pinch that drew his eyes downward to the faces whose eyes were now lingering on his face. He stared back at each, glare half-formed in the city lights. One after another, like birds dropping from a telephone wire, the gazes slipped away. Except for one. Even Naruto flinched, but a red gaze held his until Neji finally looked away, back to the blonde.

"I'm not going in there." He promised.

"What! Why not!?" Came Naruto's outcry, a theatrical nature forcing the blonde's hands into his hair as he gave what looked to be an angry tug. "Come on, man! You'll like it, stop jerking me around!"

Neji understood Naruto's irritation. His display was a little overdone, but Neji could understand that, too. His expression, however, did not shift.

"No."

He turned around and headed back down the alley.

---

He could hear the footsteps once the half-swathed beat of the club music finally faded. Had it not been for the fact that he knew exactly who was following him, Neji would have disappeared in an instant—or tried to. He was beginning to realize that it wasn't going to be quite that easy, but for now he had to focus on calming his flaring sense of danger—and either losing the tail or calling him out.

Neji cut into another alley instead of breaking onto the main street and bypassed the subway entrance, staying in the shadows of darkened businesses and sketching a path of varied difficulty out of the party district and into the business district. When the footsteps became masked by the swish of car after car, but did not fade entirely, Neji gave up and entered a lighted sidewalk, only to stop completely.

The footsteps also stopped, but finally continued to approach, as if an afterthought.

Predictably, the dark-haired, carmine-eyed boy reached him in seconds.

"We seem to have the same destination." Neji said dryly, gaze leveling somewhere just below the other's own. The arrogant expression that had taken that face hostage blossomed into an even more arrogant smirk as Sasuke slipped his hands into his jean pockets.

"Is that what they're calling tailing these days?" He responded, almost surprising Neji with his honesty for honesty's sake. A car veered by them, and Neji's expression turned, masking wariness.

"Why follow me." He asked finally, the question clear and direct. Sasuke met it with a certain amount of carelessness, beginning to walk and forcing Neji to keep in step in order to get an answer, which wasn't offered readily but prolonged by that unchanging, arrogant smirk.

"Curiosity."

That seemed like a reasonable answer to Neji—perhaps not the whole truth, but he was willing to let that go. He'd learned not to ask questions at an early age, and he didn't care to know further than skin deep for now.

"Why leave the club?" Sasuke clearly had no similar outlook.

Neji's eyes turned from the path before him, and his lips curled into a sneer that looked too much like a smirk. "This isn't quid pro quo." Another car rushed by, and the lighting change behind Sasuke's head gave him a classic look that Neji studied for a moment before Sasuke's expression deepened. It was, for all intents and purposes, deliberate.

"You looked up and it seemed like you saw a ghost."

Neji's heart beat an irregularly nervous rhythm in his chest (why did this boy look familiar, again?), but when he answered, his voice was smooth.

"You were watching, hm."

"Yes," Sasuke responded, not missing a beat, "when you saw me at Naruto's, you looked startled." His voice was calm, and Neji wondered if interrogation was built into him, or if words came so naturally that they flowed seamlessly together and apart, like the deltas of a river.

"I thought I'd recognized you." They had reached lower town and business began to give way to apartments. What had once been a line of street lamps turned into the warmer glow of porch lights, and the constant murmur of cars had become less frequent.

"Didn't you?"

Neji stopped, his shoes making a soft scuffing sound on the pavement. Sasuke continued on for a moment, as if he hadn't noticed Neji's response, but when he also stopped and looked over his shoulder, there was some kind of devilry in his expression. Then he turned and angled his head down, a shock of dark hair falling across his forehead, eyes dissecting Neji as if he were a butterfly on display—and the pieces started to click into place.

Neji quite disliked the subway, he realized. The world was too small.

"Hn." He replied vaguely, beginning to walk again as he watched the numbers of the apartments go up too slowly. They walked in a weighted silence until Neji could see the apartment he—or fate—had chosen. When he was about to ascend the steps, Sasuke stepped in front of him, an invasion of personal space that was almost too swift for Neji to avoid a collision. His mind recognized a certain brand of training and filed it away as his eyes narrowed in response.

"You don't fit in. You're trying too hard." Sasuke said, and when Neji didn't respond, leaned closer, leaving Neji to stare over his right shoulder as his warm breath brushed against Neji's cheek. "If you need a lesson..."

The tingle that went up Neji's sign was a warning to retreat, and he stepped out of the circle of Sasuke's warmth and under the light of the porch.

"Thank you for that valuable information." His voice was calm and trained, but a half-pitch off. He saw it register in Sasuke's eyes and the smirk that followed.

"Goodnight, Neji." Sasuke said. Neji unlocked the door and shut it behind him.

---

The restaurant was his mother's favorite, and Sasuke had only recently found himself taking an interest in it.

It was mostly due to a familiar dark head that seemed to be weaving its way in between tables, catching Sasuke's eyes off and on. He had not much been impressed with the seating hostess, but the promise of their waiter being with them shortly was enough to stow any discontent and keep at bay comments that he never would have uttered in front of his mother, anyway.

It was a week later and Itachi had just been offered a high-end job. They were celebrating, Sasuke's mother had said. Celebrations in the Uchiha household often went very much like this.

Sasuke's father would glower at the menu as his mother made helpful suggestions. Itachi seemed uninterested entirely, and Sasuke always seemed to place his own interest elsewhere.

Later on, they would be served and talk would turn serious. Each son would be assessed by his father; Itachi first, as he was the eldest, then Sasuke. This happened no matter the occasion, and afterward there was always the invariable potent silence. Sasuke anticipated it each time, and was running the typical questions and responses over in his head as he looked over, but did not register, the menu.

A slim, pale hand reached for his wine glass and he followed it to the source.

"Are you ready to order...Uchiha-sama." Neji said, his eyes studiously avoiding Sasuke and remaining fixed on Fugaku. Sasuke's father waved a hand, but it was Itachi that responded.

"A few more minutes, Neji-kun."

Sasuke's eyes snapped to his brother almost too quickly to notice the expression in Neji's eyes go from blank to almost stricken. It was a very minute change, however, and Sasuke wasn't certain that he'd noticed it at all. Itachi hadn't seemed to—in fact, when Sasuke looked over, his expression hadn't changed.

"He's new, isn't he?" Mikoto asked, clearly taking more interest than Fugaku, who hadn't even looked up, "How did you know him, Itachi?"

"We were at university together, he a few years behind. He's a Hyuuga." Itachi responded, noncommittal. Sasuke frowned and looked at his mother, whose face had taken on a softer edge as she glanced away courteously, her eyes looking sad.

Sasuke's jaw tightened. A Hyuuga. That explained everything, then. Well, almost everything.

Perhaps hardly anything at all.

Yet he wondered why he hadn't realized before.

---

b Author's Note; /b

1.) _Hidoke_; "Sundial." Its meaning and significance will become apparent later :


	3. Chapter 3

**The Subway Diaries (** 3/?**)  
By; **Owai  
**Rated;** R  
**Summary; **The city is cold and empty, and the subway runs through it. In a world where the city lights blind you to everything real, Uchiha Sasuke tries to impress an empire, and meets a boy running from his own. AU.

---

Only when the front doors had been locked and all the customers fed and pleased did Neji allow himself to lean against the a wall in the back room and run his mind over each second he had spent in the presence of the Uchiha family.

The analysis did very little to calm his nerves. Itachi had not only recognized him, but called him by name. Though the other had never harbored any ill-will toward Neji as far as he had known, there was no great trust between them. Neji had no illusions that, were it to benefit him otherwise, Itachi would keep his presence in Konoha silent. It was much the same for Fugaku, though Neji had the feeling that the man was more concerned with his own family than the state of others, if he even recognized the opportunity before him at all.

And then there was Sasuke.

Sasuke, who Neji had not even recognized for an Uchiha. It came to him now, the faceless shadow that had lurked in his mind and matched to Sasuke's own on the subway that day—he was, after all, a softer copy of his brother, whom Neji had known only briefly but well enough. Unable to place those dark eyes and the shape of that face, Neji had taken caution's word and disappeared from the car upon their first sighting of one another. And again, at the apartment where Neji was still having trouble settling almost three weeks later. Now it was difficult to place why he had not recognized Sasuke immediately; even mannerisms that seemed so fluid on the younger had been mirrored in his older brother.

This was all provided that Itachi shared his knowledge with his family, but Neji would have to be more observant. Things like this were going to get him killed, or worse.

"Neji."

The voice did not startle him; he had known that the floor manager had been standing behind him for the last several minutes, and had ignored it. He needed as many breaks as he could get, and if allowing the man that gave him pay raises to stare at his ass got him there, so be it. Such an allowance didn't stop the pride from sinking into Neji's shoulders though, as he turned around. The knowing gaze he offered was almost lethal.

"Take the trash out and shut down all the lights..." the manager's gaze faltered slightly, his cheeks softening with a slight blush, "then you can go home."

_No,_ Neji thought, _I can never go home._

But he did as the manager had asked, waiting for the older man to leave before he went from trash can to trash can, rolling his immaculate white sleeves and collecting bags. The kitchen area was clean and silvery, each utensil resting in its proper place. The work stations had been cleaned and ordered for the night, and though the restaurant was high-end, nice and the kind of place his family would have enjoyed, Neji knew he did not belong there. Risking a job that befitted his training, however, was far too dangerous at this point. Even with the precautions he had taken.

With a heavy push with his back and shoulder blades, Neji exited the back room and stepped into the darkening night, plastic rustling with each strained movement. The air was cool but heavy, thick with humidity and Neji's own thoughts as he turned and carefully surveyed the corners of the building, the turn of the alley and the shadows created by phantoms of his own ghosts. Nothing moved in the still night, but Neji was more than aware of i _presence_ /I .

His muscles stiffened and the bags fell sharply to the concrete.

"Come out." He said, fingers coming to a point all too naturally. He marveled at how seamlessly his mind picked up the hint of an intruder with no visual or auditory cues. It was simply instinct, being threatened and preparing for that.

"Tch." Sasuke said, coming around the corner of the restaurant, hands in his pockets. Still in his dinner clothing, he looked relaxed and vindictive, knowing but still curious. Neji felt the urge to take a cautionary step back, but refrained. Whatever violence Sasuke could offer him would be easily countered. "A bit on edge, aren't you?"

Neji let out a soft snort, derisive and prompt before he turned to put the bags into the dumpster. When he turned back, Sasuke was several steps closer.

"What do you want, Uchiha."

Sasuke's smirk, ever-present, grew. "I didn't know Hyuuga came this far west." He said, closing the space between them. Neji's gaze remained even, unsurprised.

"But you've done well pretending not to be Hyuuga...haven't you." Sasuke continued upon stopping, close—so close it took but a small movement for him to flick the back of his fingers against the bandages wrapped around Neji's forehead. Too swift for the other to draw his hand away, Neji caught those fingers between his own, a stilling white-fisted grip that didn't seem to faze Sasuke at all.

"I'm not pretending anything." Neji responded.

"Then you wouldn't happen to know anything about the Hyuuga prodigy, would you?" Sasuke continued smoothly, "I heard that he's haunted."

Neji felt his blood flow a little hotter, a little thicker. Speculation about the Hyuuga hardly ever hit close to the mark, but that didn't make it any less cruel—especially when it brushed it.

"A Hyuuga myth. There is no Hyuuga prodigy." Neji forced his voice to be light. There was no such thing as ghosts, people said, but they often misunderstood the word. _Haunting_ required little more than memory.

Sasuke drew closer. Again, in a mimicry of their confrontation almost a week ago, he pressed his cheek to Neji's, hot in the cool night. "I don't believe any of it." He whispered before drawing back slightly and offering Neji a calculated look, thoroughly smug.

Neji smirked and released Sasuke's hand. With pleasure, he saw the fingers twitch out of the corner of his eye, but did not draw back to view the full effect. Lips also by Sasuke's ear, Neji had the benefit of exuding something to the same effect that the Uchiha had. Danger and knowledge enough to pull the other out of a past he didn't understand and into a world that he was too drunk on. Taunting.

"I didn't know that the Uchiha had a second son."

The punch was not wholly unexpected; Sasuke had seemed to pause beforehand as if contemplating and Neji had, after all, been the server for the Uchiha table all evening. He had more than noticed the tension that seemed to sit there, and with Itachi's status as a prodigy and Neji's own understanding of inadequacy and jealousy, it was not hard to notice where it came from. He admitted to himself, as Sasuke's fist connected with his jaw, that he had provoked it intentionally. He wanted to see Sasuke angry, yet that did not explain why he had failed to protect himself.

It hurt, though, and even with Sasuke suddenly slamming him into the wall and wrinkling his work shirt, Neji noticed very little aside from the sharp pain in his jaw. "Does Naruto know?"

Neji merely smirked, refusing to give anything away though he couldn't stop berating himself for this slip. For this obviousness. Chin lifted in denial, but Sasuke wasn't giving up so easily.

"I'd want to know if I were harboring a _yakuza_. I said, does Naruto know?" With that, Sasuke gave a yank

at Neji's shirt. The sound of popping buttons and taut material shifted through the air and Neji thought—_Well, there goes another day's cash_ before he even registered that Sasuke was poking around his abdomen, looking for something in the half-dark.

"What are you doing." Neji stated blankly, noting with a sense of pride the way Sasuke's hands seemed to press harder, to rake against his skin with irritation at just how calm his words sounded. "You've already located my incrimination." Sasuke's eyes snapped to the bandages around Neji's forehead. Before Neji could tell what was happening, the other had fisted his hand in Neji's hair and yanked the Hyuuga's head back, exposing his neck to the wan moonlight that was peeking over the nearest building.

"I want to see it."

Neji's fingers closed once again around Sasuke's, loosening the grip on his hair just enough so he could stare level with the other. Or as level as he could, what with Sasuke being several centimeters taller. "No." He answered. "You seem smart. You'd do best to mind your own business, like Naruto."

When Sasuke pressed against him hard and Neji could feel the brick behind him cool and rough in the night, he was still not surprised. When Sasuke's lips pressed against his, though, hot and moist and more than minutely violent, his body could not compensate for the brain's lack of precognition. He sat in stunned unresponsiveness until heat rushed to the site of contact and flared up his spinal column. At that point, responding was the only option.

And he did, because Sasuke was pressed hot against him and kissing was always the easiest way to forget. He thought that maybe this hadn't been what he wanted, but any kind of violence would do, and the kiss was hardly gentle.

He met Sasuke push for push, bite for bite until his lips were swollen and used and Sasuke had moved on to the rapidly forming bruise on Neji's jaw. Soft lips pressed and then the swirl of a rough tongue, almost painful until Sasuke moved on, the path laid clean for him by his previous actions. Neji felt each and every prick and bite of teeth against skin, and when his eyes slipped closed it was only to keep at bay the thick growl that lay trembling behind his parted lips.

Neji could feel Sasuke's breaths rapid and heavy on his skin, a contrast to the cool April air. His lips were hot, and he kissed hungrily, marking as he saw fit. When Sasuke finally paused just below Neji's navel, Neji looked down to find his hands in the Uchiha's hair, and Sasuke's eyes a firestorm of red.

"I can make it my business." Sasuke said, and Neji could see the way he panted, and Neji's own stomach tightened with something akin to want.

But instead of voicing that or acting on it, Neji merely smirked, an action that wanted to be half-hearted but which Neji forced into full blossom. He pushed a midnight strand of hair off of Sasuke's forehead and felt the other's fingers digging into his hips, Sasuke crouching on the ground before him.

"You can't." Neji said simply.

He watched the violence cloud Sasuke's eyes again, no longer clear. And this time he did not expect it when Sasuke slammed him into the wall, causing Neji's head to crack against the brick painfully and his shoulders to scratch beneath his shirt. Sasuke's lips, now hot and demanding and a little bit homicidal, descended upon his once more only to perch a short, crushing moment and then move to suction at his neck.

Neji let out a grunt of protest as he felt Sasuke's teeth mark him, but did little more than glare when the Uchiha pulled away; he looked ruffled and angry, yet still somehow satisfied.

"The fuck I can't."

Well past irritated now, Neji shouldered past him and back into the restaurant, ignoring the pleased look on Sasuke's face as he did so. The door slamming behind him was a mocking jeer.

---

"It's a love bite. Tenten—! Did you hear? Can you see, with this little camera?"

"It's not."

"It is! I've seen the movies. Oh, how wonderful. I knew that crossing the central line would open multitudes of opportunities for you, Neji! This is more than you gaining freedom, you're gaining _life_! Your spirit—"

A groan. "Stop it, Lee. Tenten, we'll call you back after we've finished."

"Goodbye, Tenten!"

Neji handed the near antique camera-phone back to Lee with a look of disgust and shoved one hand in his jean pocket, the other curling possessively around the strap of his bag. It was early—early enough that there hadn't been a peep out of Naruto's room when Neji had left, and the sunlight was just beginning to flicker through the cracks of the buildings. It was the first time he'd seen Lee in weeks, and Neji was already exhausted by him.

"Hmm, so this girl you're seeing, does she have a name?" Lee asked, looking contemplative. There was undoubtedly enough for the two of them to catch up on, but Neji didn't like talking and Lee didn't much like thinking in straight lines, or prioritizing. It was something that Neji had gotten used to over the years.

"Lee. I'm not seeing anyone."

"Neji!" Lee looked horrified, "You mean to tell me that—that you got this _mark of sin _during a random encounter?!"

Neji let out a terse sigh and rolled his eyes. What had once been a "love bite" had been downsized to the depths of hell in a matter of seconds, and he really wasn't willing to deal with the aftershocks of such a paradigm shift. He was still having a hard time thinking about the whole thing without getting extremely irritated, and Lee's continual accusations weren't helping things.

"Hn." He said, neither admitting nor denying. Lee seemed to dissolve into a puddle of despair as he contemplated the possibilities.

After a few minutes of silence (which weren't really _silent_, if one counted Lee's distressed muttering and the occasional masculine whimper) Neji looked over at his companion and forced himself to keep his gaze on what he had always considered to be something of an eyesore. That was, Lee's outfit in combination with his ridiculous bowl cut.

"Where is this place."

"Oh—oh, just a few more minutes away," Lee said cheerfully, having either forgotten about the damnation of Neji's eternal soul, or at least having decided to revisit the problem at a later date. "Gai-sensei was rather disappointed that he couldn't rent the dojo out for us."

"It couldn't be under his name." Neji said, thinking that he'd explained this to Lee before. "It's too far west. Someone would be suspicious and look into it."

Lee nodded, looking uncomfortable. They continued, an odd awkwardness filling the silent air between them—awkward, simply because such silence was unusual. Lee often filled it in some way or another.

Eventually, Neji lost track of where the conversation should or should not be going, and his thoughts wandered. Naruto had fussed rather adamantly about the bruise on Neji's jaw the night before, and had demanded over the course of several hours to know exactly how he'd gotten it. Apparently the blonde had a rather short-term memory, but when Neji had finally settled on a glare after being slowly worn down by the constant nagging, Naruto seemed to have gotten the point. He didn't ask again, only muttered something about having Sakura come over the next afternoon to look at it.

But Neji was hardly thinking about the bruise; it looked worse than it was simply because his skin was so pale, and he'd had far worse injuries before. It was Sasuke's insistence on being a pain in the ass that really made Neji think, and the fact that he knew the Uchiha was only butting in so that he could lord something over his brother only served to make Neji more irritated. He couldn't be sure if Sasuke was playing a game, or if he really ought to be worried about being discovered. Not that he wasn't already.

They had stopped at a tall, classy-looking building somewhere downtown, and Neji took in the surroundings with a quick glance before focusing his eyes on Lee.

"This is it!" Lee said unnecessarily.

Inside, it looked more like an upscale hotel than a martial arts center—the man at the front desk was dressed in a pantsuit that made Neji feel like he was going to visit his uncle in one of his many offices. He took a walk around the lobby while Lee signed in, having caught how the attendant looked at him. His eyes, while not well-known in this part of the city, did stand out. And he had already encountered one of his uncle's holdings.

Their dojo was traditional and private, yet mainstreamed. Neji looked around for the souji materials and found none; a sign near the changing room explained that the dojo was cleaned before and after every session. Frowning at it, Neji pulled his bag over his shoulder and went to change, leaving Lee (who seemed to have been dressed in proper attire since birth) to wind bandages and grip tape around his arms and hands.

When he came back it was to find Lee twisted into an impossible position, looking more than ready to have another go at handing Neji his own ass. It had been too long, and Neji felt the corners of his mouth twitch upward.

Lee allowed him to don bandages and stretch properly, but was on his feet the moment Neji stood.

"Ready, Neji? I have improved! You will find me more difficult to beat this time."

Neji said nothing, merely extended his hand and widened his stance, beckoning Lee to come.

He did, like a charging freight train. Neji counted the thuds of Lee's bare feet on the tatami matting and twisted to meet the kick that had been aimed for his head. Lee of course, wasted no time in delivering another, this time to the abdominal region which Neji also blocked, sending the green-clad martial artist back a foot and a half.

"I see you've improved as well! But have you learned anything new?"

Lee always fought like he was instructing, and it amused Neji, who had always bested him. When Lee came at him this time, Neji grabbed his fist and twisted Lee's body in front of him, two fingers deadening a bulky muscle in the other man's lower-back. It affected Lee's landing as Neji pushed him away.

"Ah—clearly you have found an equal with whom to spar, Neji! If I can judge anything by that bruise of yours." Lee said from the floor, rubbing his back though he knew it would be useless to clear the muscle of the searing pain.

Neji's step barely faltered, but his body went through a period of remembrance at that. Muscles tightening against the harsh press of stone and a foreign body, skin fluttering under the heat and brush of lips and tongue. Neji blinked and felt his face flush in a response that had not occurred the night before—and it was only the sharp landing of a kick to his shoulder that brought him back.

Lee had seen his distraction and taken the opportunity, and now they hit and parried blow for blow, neither one forcing the other back or allowing him forth. Lee's speed was unmatched, but Neji did not have to match it to beat it. The blows he had to disengage or else face their bone-crushing power. Fingers were much easier to maneuver into openings than fists or feet, but even so, they carried on for nearly an hour before finally calling it quits.

Mopping a towel over his forehead, Lee panted a few feet away from Neji, who loosened bandages and periodically rubbed his shoulder.

"You should come back, Neji. Tenten misses you, and the Hyu—"

"Don't." Neji cut in quickly. He had scanned the room for cameras and found none, but one never knew who was listening.

"How can you live like this?" Lee finally said after a moment. He sounded sad, and the expression on Neji's face softened a little.

"It's not living. Not yet." He replied, standing seamlessly and walking into the changing room. Lee followed.

"When will it be? When won't you have to look over your shoulder, or into mirrors just to see if there's someone behind you?"

"Lee. Stop it." Neji said, pausing to pull his shirt off. There was a bruise on his shoulder indeed, dark and purple and painful. He dabbed ointment and wrapped the site, listening to Lee say nothing at all.

The silence said enough. Lee had never understood exactly why Neji had left, and Neji had stressed telling him at all. The final decision had come down to what was safest—leaving without informing Lee would only invite him as a tracker, and Neji knew that Lee would have no problems going to Neji's family in innocence for help. He couldn't risk that, but Neji had to wonder if it had really been the best choice.

When he finished, he joined Lee on a bench facing the lockers. They stretched out in rows like a thousand metal cages, all streamlined and efficient. Lee kicked at one of the open doors lightly, and they watched it sway to and fro for a moment without speaking.

"They're looking for you." Lee said finally.

"I know."

"It's not public, though. No posters or pictures or ads in the paper, like I thought." He was solemn, and Neji found himself wanting to twist that note out of Lee's voice—a near shocking discovery.

"That just makes it more dangerous. I suppose they must be using the underground." It was a harrowing thought, but Neji was not hopeful enough to guess that his family had stopped their search so soon. It also proved that they weren't desperate yet. It suggested that perhaps they'd found clues to Neji's whereabouts, and he struggled with the idea of moving elsewhere.

"Neji, be careful please!" Lee shouted, his voice too loud in the empty room as he sat forward and looked at Neji with his wide, pleading eyes. "Tenten will kill me if anything happens to you! You know she's waiting for you to come back and marry her."

Neji smirked because it wasn't true, but he nodded once, simply, and got up to leave.

"I'll see you next weekend, Neji! And maybe I can meet your roommate and your girlfriend!" Lee grinned and Neji sighed, and they left the building together before parting.

---

"Tadaima."

The house seemed empty when Sasuke entered, and the scrape of his shoes was loud enough to add meaning to that emptiness: a dull slip as he pulled them off, a sound that still served a purpose.

His mother was home, of course. He could sense her presence like a warmth in the house---and she was always home these, though her job as a housewife seemed lackluster now that both her children had more or less stumbled onto their own feet. Sasuke could feel that in her every time he returned here, as if his maturation was a dry and barren womb that had stolen some kind of light from her face, from her life. It made something in him ache just a little to know that as one of her greatest triumphs, he was constantly letting her down with the hardness he had gained from continual defeat at the hands of his brother.

Sasuke found her in the living room; she was seated on a pillow on the tatami beneath a lamp and a table where she penned some letter or another. She was always writing, either to him or Itachi, or relatives that they saw infrequently. She looked up when he entered.

"Okaeri, Sasuke-kun..." His mother said with a smile---a deep one. One that lit her eyes and rounded her cheeks. She had a smudge of ink on her right hand, and Sasuke noticed immediately. His eyes could hardly stand to stay on her face for long.

"Sit down," Mikoto continued, patting a space right beside her as she always did. She liked him close, and Sasuke didn't mind giving her what she wanted. He pulled a pillow up and settled himself behind the table, idly reading the note that she was writing---to his father, of all people. Like she didn't see him every night. Like they didn't live in the same house.

"You must be busy, hmm?" She mused, finally putting the pen down and looking up at him. "You haven't been around the house much lately. Dinner was the first we've seen of you since your semester started..." Her fingers were in his hair, assessing, pulling in that mother's way. He could hear her thoughts already. _You need a haircut_ and Sasuke silently agreed.

"Aa." He said aloud.

"We've already gotten your first report from the university. You're doing very well." She pinched the flesh between his shoulder and his neck (checking that he was eating right, presumably), and Sasuke twitched in the way only she could make him do. "Both my boys are so successful."

"The first more than the last."

He couldn't help but say it.

But his mother's dark eyes flickered, one eyebrow raised in near-amusement. She had never let him pity himself, but he was no longer a child that she could assure. She couldn't say _You are the greatest boy in the world_ and have him believe it. Over the years, her tactics had changed.

"Maa," Mikoto said, voice falsely heavy, "My son is so wise, he knows what goes on behind closed doors and won't even believe what his mother tells him anymore..."

"Okaa-san," Sasuke replied with exasperation, unable to stop the hint of a smile from escaping onto his lips as he flopped back onto the tatami. He heard his mother giggle as she leaned back on her hands to look at him. In that moment he was her favorite companion, and Sasuke couldn't help but show the gratitude on his face.

Her expression calmed and she looked at him genuinely. "You shouldn't let him get to you like that, ne, Sasuke-kun." Mikoto said softly, "Your brother. You aren't little boys anymore that have to compete to gain your father's attention."

Sasuke's smile faded and he felt his heart stumble a bit in his chest. He directed his eyes to the ceiling and looked at the wooden beams that supported the roof, though he had memorized them thoroughly several years before. His mother didn't understand what went on between the men in this household---or maybe she understood it far too well, and just saw above it. Either way, Sasuke knew that it hurt her to see how things had turned out, when she had only ever raised them to love. Itachi was as cold and ice and Sasuke was a flame that burned everything in his path. There was no way for it to have turned out any differently.

"I've never had his attention." Sasuke said, speaking of his father. He was still the second son.

"You have it more than you think." A pause, "Your father's a quiet, prideful man and is very proud of you, Sasuke."

Her tone quieted any response Sasuke may have concocted, and he let out a soft sigh and was silent. Mikoto dropped down beside him a moment later, and he counted her breaths and watched the ceiling.

"Okaa-san." Sasuke said several minutes later, feeling rather than seeing her head turn toward him. He was thinking of dinner the weekend before and how she had sighed knowingly when Itachi had mentioned Neji's name.

How he thought about Neji so often was vexing him. The other was like an itch he couldn't help but scratch.

"Hmm?"

"When we were at your restaurant last weekend, do you remember the boy that served us?"

She didn't answer for a long time, but Sasuke doubted she was looking back in her memory, trying to remember. She was just choosing what answer to give him, and how to present it. "Yes. The Hyuuga boy, I remember him."

"What do you know. ...About them."

"Oh, only the same kinds of things that people know about us." She said, but he caught the lie of omission and she knew it. So she continued, "It's just a..." Sasuke could hear her struggling with her compassion, and it worried him. "It's not so much a family as a system. When I grew up on the other side, I heard a lot of myths. More than over here. It's hard to tell what's real and what's not, but they're not like us."

"That doesn't say much." Sasuke insisted.

"You should ask your friend, Sasuke." Mikoto said, sitting up and looking bothered. "If he has bandages around his forehead and is on this side of the central line, he's already risking enough---maybe he'll tell you."

"He's not my friend," Sasuke interjected as he watched his mother stand, thinking about what she'd said. She stretched and smiled, her expression clearing.

"Aa, you just like him," she teased. Sasuke felt his cheeks redden and he cursed her power over him as he rolled over and buried his face in a pillow. She had sufficiently reduced him to the age of four again, and he found himself fervently denying her accusation in his mind. Yet there was no reason to deny it to himself, was there? He'd punched the bastard in the face.

And practically ravished him.

"_'Kaa-san---_" Sasuke groaned into the pillow, but she was already in the kitchen preparing their supper.

He stayed for dinner and left laden with food. Some for Naruto, some for Sakura, and some for Neji.

His mother really didn't get it at _all_.

---

"Look you bastard, if you weren't such a hotheaded freak, we could go to the club this weekend---"

"Half that fight was you, dumbass. Just because I'm the one that ended up with the bruise doesn't make it _my_ fault."

Ino groaned and ran a hand through her long blond hair. Kiba and Naruto were facing each other across the table, and the way the sun was shining made them look a little bit like prepubescent gods. Or at least overgrown monkeys, what with the way they both were growling at one another. Really, this was hardly the place. It was supposed to be a nice cafe.

"Why don't we just do something else, compadres?"

Ino was learning Spanish, and she thought it made her sound intelligent, dropping bits and pieces into the conversation. Naruto and Kiba merely looked at her dumbly, but then people naturally got that look from the pair.

"Right." Kiba said after a long moment's pause. "Like what."

Naruto blinked at her, and Ino suddenly remembered why she was the brains of this project. She preened.

"Well, obviously it would have to be something genius, involving ridiculous amounts of alcohol, yet easy enough for you two idiots to pull off without having to call a brain surgeon in."

"Well?" Kiba pressed. Naruto seemed too dumbfounded to even bother managing a reply, Ino noticed as she sipped her fruit juice. Actually, the blonde seemed rather distracted by something. But whatever, he had ADD anyway---no news there.

"I have the perfect idea, boys." Ino said, arching an eyebrow chillingly.

---

They'd found each other at the library of all places, late-week. It was not a place either of them found conducive to much else than quiet study, and thus the not-argument that had been riding the air between them upon each meeting was left somewhere in the vicinity of the front door. Sasuke had been pleased to see that the bruise on Neji's cheekbone had faded, but the mark on his neck had not. Neji had been pleased that Sasuke seemed content at staring at him until the library closed as opposed to asking any more unwarranted questions.

They were both annoyed when Naruto met them at the door and demanded, quite loudly, that they go out for ramen.

---

"Drunk strip poker." Naruto said with obvious triumph.

"Who thought of _that_?" Shikamaru asked disdainfully. Naruto had not been fooled by Shikamaru's apparent loss of consciousness on the couch, but was still quite pleased when Ino whacked him on the head with her purse.

"_I_ did, asshole."

"Hmph." Shikamaru said, rolling over to mutter into the cushions. "That's too much work, taking clothing off. I think I'll just take a nap."

Naruto sighed and watched Ino take off her coat, not bothering to mention that it would probably be a better idea for her to keep it i on /i if they really were going to go through with this whole thing. They were all supposed to meet at nine, but Sakura had phoned to say she'd be getting off work late, and Sasuke had grunted at the plan in general, so Naruto wasn't even sure that he would show up at all.

Neji had been in his room for the last five hours. Naruto _thought_.

Kiba came in from the kitchen with a drink in his hand and knocked it back in one seamless motion, looking halfway toward drunk already. "Can we start already?"

"Looks like someone's already started." Ino muttered. She'd pushed Shikamaru's legs off of the couch and had settled herself within the sunken cushions, legs crossed and looking for all the world as if she'd had better places to be than Naruto's trashy apartment.

Well, his apartment wasn't trashy. Actually it had gotten much nicer since Neji had moved in, thank-you-very-much, Miss Snooty Pants. Naruto had even cleaned up his socks and put his dirty dishes in the sink. Granted, there was the ever-present bowl of ramen broth sitting on the kitchen table, but that was written in on Naruto's birth certificate and had clearly been inscribed into his DNA. People should just learn to deal with it.

"We have to wait for Sakura-chan," Naruto whined with his best puppy-dog face. Kiba, as a dog-lover, merely scowled.

The door, seemingly hearing Naruto's prayers, opened in that precise second to reveal not only Sakura but Sasuke as well. Sakura looked tired and unhappy, and Sasuke looked like a dick, so it seemed that all was well with the world. Or at least normal. Naruto let out a whoop and turned around to bang wildly on Neji's door. The stuck-up bastard couldn't get away from him this time, not when the party was in his own living room.

Five minutes later, Neji had been fully roused and was staring at Naruto with a blank look of supreme superiority.

"So you're getting drunk before even bothering to play this game of yours," he said, tone sounding unamused, "and calling it drunk strip poker."

Naruto nodded along with Kiba. Ino seemed to have lost interest in taking the fall for her idea, and was poking Shikamaru's foot through one of the holes in his socks.

"Why don't you take a shot with every article of clothing you lose. Or two shots, if you insist on being ridiculous."

Something about the way Neji said it made Naruto want to smack him, but he'd be damned if it wasn't a good idea. Hell, half the time when he was drunk he couldn't get his clothes off _period_, and that would defeat the entire purpose of the game. It was agreed. Fifths of the hard stuff were brought out with ice and a couple of bottles of water, and they all sat on Naruto's oddly immaculate floor (Neji must have been cleaning again) and began. Except Shikamaru, who slept.

Eleven hands in, Naruto was down to his boxers and he was holding his cards face-side out.

"Stop trying to see my cards, bastards." He slurred to no one in particular.

"Che. We don't have to _try_ moron, you're holding your cards backwards and you haven't got shit."

Naruto turned his cards around and so he was. He almost felt grateful to Sasuke for pointing it out, and then remembered that the asshole had insulted him, and squinted angrily in his general direction. He'd lost count of how many times he'd lost, but he was pretty sure he'd just taken his seventh shot. Which was odd, since they'd played some great amount of hands and he was taking two shots for each loss and seven was an odd number (had he been _sneaking_? He couldn't remember). But whatever, he could work out the math in the morning. Or just ask Neji, as he seemed to be an intelligent one.

"Neji---Neji how drunk I am?" He asked the circle. Sakura handed him a bottle of water and took the tequila away.

"Neji's not here. He went to bed half an hour ago." She explained politely. Naruto petted her face. She was so _nice_. Nice and pink and pretty. And wearing no shirt. And her bra was pink, too!

"It matches," Naruto muttered, putting his arms around her and promptly passing out into breasts that weren't so much skin as they were bra.

---

"You could have knocked." Neji said tightly, though he didn't bother looking up from the low table he had stationed himself at in the corner of the room. Sasuke smirked and closed the door behind him, leaning against the door frame with crossed arms.

Neji's room was nice---nicer than Naruto's at least, a room which Sasuke'd had the misfortune to be exposed to on more than one occasion. He had very few belongings; a futon was laid out neatly in the corner, there was a bookshelf set against the wall (where most of Neji's possessions seemed to sit, though each spine of every book was neatly organized by author's name), and a desk, also neat, rested quietly by the door. Sasuke had almost expected there to be more to it.

"Naruto passed out fifteen minutes ago." He said.

"Good for him." Neji responded, "I'm sure that was his intention."

"And yours? To get him drunk enough that he didn't notice you'd left?"

"Hardly. What would you know about my motivations, Uchiha."

Sasuke moved further into the room, coming to stand behind Neji's carefully seated figure. He looked down and identified immediately the articles of shouji: brush, paper, weight. The characters that Neji had written on the page were old and flowing, a haiku that Sasuke recognized, and once read nearly made him laugh aloud.

"You have a sense of humor?" He sneered.

"Not that I'm aware of."

Neji cleaned the brush and put away his supplies, movements so methodical and effortless that Sasuke found it difficult not to be entranced by them. When he was finished, he turned to Sasuke and looked up at him patiently. His eyes were like small moons in the half-lit room. Behind the closed door, Sasuke could hear Kiba and Ino laughing.

"Did you want something."

Sasuke noted his word choice and smirked. Moving carefully, he dropped to his knees next to Neji so that they were only several centimeters apart.

"I asked my mother about you." He said after he'd leaned close. Neji didn't so much as bat an eyelash, and Sasuke took that as an invitation---not that any other movement from Neji would have suggested anything else.

"That meddlesome, are you."

"Next time I'll ask Itachi." Sasuke was close enough to feel the sudden heat radiate off of Neji's body at those words, and his lips curled softly. Neji's head turned in anger, but their lips brushed and Sasuke was the one left feeling triumphant again.

"What the hell do you wa---"

Sasuke sealed his lips against Neji's, pressed him down into the carpet in one swift movement. He was buzzed but hardly drunk, and the only things that were missing were his socks. Neji hadn't taken a single shot; his poker face had been like a block of granite, and Sasuke could taste mint toothpaste as he swiped his tongue against Neji's front teeth.

He was surprised (but not) when he felt Neji respond. His kiss was angry before it became soft and subtle, making Sasuke's hair rise in all the right places, nothing like the unresponsive irritation that he'd received a week before. He felt cool, slim fingers slip into his hair and soothe his scalp, warm from the alcohol that had filtered into his bloodstream. Then they parted and looked at each other, breaths coming deeper than they should have for bodies at rest.

Sasuke wasn't sure who moved first, he was only aware that they were pressed against each other again, hard this time and hot. Neji's hands were up his shirt, fingernails raking softly against his chest while Sasuke was trying valiantly to find the button of Neji's pants. He couldn't, be it either through the half-haze of drunknenness or their positions, but he did manage to pull Neji's shirt up, to run his tongue up the other's abdomen and watch him arch and pant softly. He wanted to hear Neji moan, but wondered if that cool facade would allow it. Either way, it didn't much matter. The look on Neji's face was almost enough to make him hard.

"Get it now, Hyuuga?" Sasuke grunted, smirking as Neji pulled him down and rolled his hips up against Sasuke's. He moaned and breathed hotly against Neji's ear, pressing down and rubbing against the other solidly, making Neji gasp and clutch at him.

"That's what I tho---"

The door opened and the room was blasted with the grating sound of drunken laughter and half-formed words. Kiba wavered uncertainly at the door, his gaze clearly not focused on the two of them, but looking somewhere past them.

"We're going back to Shikamaru's so...Naruto's asleep or something. I think he puked. Bye."

Sasuke heard Neji groan, and it was with half-expressed want and fully infused irritation. Instead of getting up like he knew he should, however, Sasuke pressed his lips against Neji's throat and nipped there, one hand rubbing at the half-hard bulge in Neji's pants before the Hyuuga could slip away from him completely.

Neji was unkempt and ruffled and sexy, and Sasuke rolled onto his back and cursed Naruto and Kiba and everything that he could think to curse as Neji disappeared into the living room.

Naruto hadn't thrown up, but he had sufficiently ruined Sasuke's night. Neji, who apparently couldn't leave a mess (or was either very minutely obsessive compulsive) looked after Naruto and cleaned up the entire living room, smirking at Sasuke's disdainful looks every time he came to the bedroom door in varying degrees of undress. Eventually Sasuke just ended up falling asleep on Neji's futon, his face buried in a pillow that smelled very much like Neji.

When he awoke in the morning, it was to a sound of very persistent knocking on the front door, and to Neji pulling on his shoes and disappearing out the bedroom window. It took him a moment to register what he'd seen, and it was only when his senses cleared that he heard the very distinct sound of voices coming from the living room.

He opened the bedroom door to find Naruto standing with two straight-backed men, their eyes white like snow.

---

**Author's Note;  
**1) Neji's haiku:

_Without flowing wine  
How to enjoy lovely  
Cherry blossoms._

Anonymous.


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** The Subway Diaries 4/?  
**Rated:** M  
**Summary:** The city is cold and empty, and the subway runs through it. In a world where the city lights blind you to everything real, Uchiha Sasuke tries to impress an empire, and meets a boy running from his own. AU.

---

Uzumaki Naruto was in the middle of a beautiful alcohol-induced dream.

He wasn't entirely sure of what it consisted of, being unconscious and still slightly drunk. But it made him tingle in all the right places, and there was a certain sense of euphoria that had started at the tips of his toes and was now running up his spine. He thought it had something to do with the field-and-sunshine type setting, or perhaps the fact that he was chasing a bra-and-panty clad Sakura, but for whatever reason, it was a good dream.

It got a little bit weird when they ended up sitting across from each other, Sakura knocking on his suddenly very achy head with her knuckles (which were usually empowered in the process of punching him, so it was still something of an improvement on real life) as she grinned and leaned close to him.

"Sasuke and Neji are having sex in the next room," Dream-Sakura said, conveying a bit too much delight for someone whom Naruto had thought completely devoted to bearing Sasuke's children only hours before. The news quite extinguished Naruto's high despite Sakura still being half-naked, and he groaned when he found himself faced with Neji's closed door, the rapping seamlessly shifting from his forehead to the wood paneling. Sakura was giggling as she reached for the doorknob.

Naruto covered his eyes as the door was opened. As fate would have it, his eyelids and hands appeared to be entirely translucent, and just as the door pushed forward enough to reveal even the smallest hint of furniture (Naruto was too horrified to care that it wasn't Neji's at all, but his own four-poster) Naruto shrieked ("No I don't want to see Sasuke naked!") and found himself sitting up on the living room couch, a painful band of sunlight shining in his eyes.

There was a knock at the door, and Naruto nearly jumped out of his skin.

Slipping off the couch and neatly into a pile, Naruto swore never to drink again. His head was aching and his stomach felt as if he'd run it through a blender. Not to mention the fact that he never, ever wanted to have a fucked up dream like that again. No way he needed that shit going through his mind.

As he pulled himself to his feet, Naruto half-wondered where the dream had come from and attributed it to the group's naturally drunken escapades and the fact that he was aching for some action and it would figure that Sasuke would be getting some since Naruto hadn't. For weeks. And Neji would have made a pretty girl, so the whole thing was almost all right. Almost.

The incessant pounding started up again just as Naruto finally reached the door. He flung it open, expecting to see Sasuke with a smug look on his face or Sakura looking for her shirt (which Naruto distinctly remembered hiding within the couch cushions sometime the night before). In either case, he had the perfect retort.

It wasn't Sasuke or Sakura.

Two men, pale and scowling and vaguely familiar, stared at him with a single stormy gaze that came on very much like a bulldozer. Naruto's head throbbed and he wondered if he was being audited—a ridiculous thought, he didn't notice, as he wasn't even in management of a business (or any substantial funds at all).

"Uh, yeah?" he squinted out, the bright sunlight behind the two men making him want to curl up under a rock and die.

"We're looking for Hyuuga Neji," one or the other responded. Naruto couldn't tell. They looked the same, and neither mouth seemed to have moved at all.

Unsurprisingly, Naruto had a rather unpleasant flashback to the dream he'd just had, and in combination with the hangover, found himself clutching at his stomach in hopes that the action would stop him from dry-heaving in front of the two men that were standing on his porch.

Nausea pushed aside for the time being, Naruto studied the two a bit more closely. They had the same colorless gaze as his roommate with almost the same air about them—neither looked particularly amused or any variant of the word, and Naruto was more than willing to bet that they were relatives of the silent boy he lived with. Naturally, he invited them in.

"So, who're you guys?"

"Cousins," one grunted while the other watched Naruto cup his chin and nod knowingly. Just then, the door of Neji's bedroom opened, revealing a half-dressed Sasuke, generous enough to offer free looks of disdain all around.

"What's this, dobe?" he asked, walking into the room wearing the face of one who had, no doubt in Naruto's mind, laid his roommate the night before. Oh, God.

"Neji's cousins," Naruto said abysmally. Sasuke smirked.

"Neji's not here," he said, directing the words to the two men who seemed to be eyeing him with some form of scrutiny. Unsurprising, Naruto thought. Pretty much anyone could see how big of an asshole Sasuke was by just looking at him. "He went out last night while you idiots were drunk." This, he said to Naruto.

And then he shot him a _look_.

Naruto swallowed, translating that look far too easily. It was physically equated with Sasuke shoving a knife to the small of his back and whispering in a very rude voice, _Follow my lead_.

"Oh yeah?" he finally squeaked, rubbing the back of his aching head and acting like it was news to him. Because it was. "Bastard."

"You won't mind if we take a look around then," one of them said to Sasuke, not sounding convinced. Unaffected, Sasuke shrugged and moved to the door, slipping on his shoes.

"Whatever. Talk to him, it's his apartment."

And then, with little gesture to Naruto, he left the blonde in a cinch with _that look_ and more questions than Naruto would have preferred to deal with.

_Bastard._

---

The subway car rattled as it began to pick up speed.

A handful of early travelers lined the sides of the car, spaces like mountains between them as each one seemed to sink into the thin cushioning, amorphous. Sasuke allowed his eyes to roam over each, though his gaze hardly lingered on one face or the other. His attention would be wasted on them, anyway—that figure, the one he'd come for, he kept targeted in the corner of his eye as he moved to the next car. Empty, except for Neji.

The cab had been quick—quicker than Neji could run, though Sasuke had already known where he'd been going. He'd identified in Neji from the very first a certain kind of flight, or maybe struggle. Sasuke didn't know much about the Hyuuga as a family (_a system_ his mother's voice reminded him), but he refused to believe that the trait Neji had exhibited in slipping away so swiftly (before even a knock at the door) was cowardice. Such a thing didn't sit in the aristocratic set of shoulders, in the calm, serene gaze that stared unbroken out the window despite there being nothing to see.

"Your curiosity really is insatiable," Neji said from across the isle without turning, his voice carrying some hint of a burden though Sasuke kept himself from trying to identify it. Instead, he slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against one of the upright support poles.

"Are you sure it's my curiosity?" he replied, smirking at Neji's back.

Neji turned around, moved first with his head, and then with his body as a bird does. The movement was so slight it almost wasn't there, but suddenly Neji was facing him. His face was hard and closed, his expression nonexistent though his eyes glowed faintly in the bright, florescent lighting of the car. Had he not been made of fire, Sasuke felt he may have been frozen by such a stare.

"Didn't I tell you to mind your own business." Never a question. Always a statement. Sasuke filed it away.

"Are we really going to go through this again?" Sasuke said after a moment, adopting a bored tone and expression. He took a few steps until he was standing next to Neji, and looked out at the blank grey walls that seemed to meld into one slick line of liquid storm under his gaze. Neji remained seated as he had been, staring at nothing.

"Are you _really_ doing this," Neji said after a moment, turning his luminous gaze upward. The angle and set of dark brows gave him a particularly fierce look that affected Sasuke not at all.

"What?"

"Wasting my time. And yours," the Hyuuga turned back to the window, his expression as mild as his body language. Whatever fear had arrested him, whatever tension he may have felt at being pursued either by his family or Sasuke, was stowed somewhere safely away where the Uchiha could detect no trace of it. "Haven't you something you could be doing. Studying, perhaps. Learning from warnings," he paused, voice carefully casual.

"Maybe something that would make your father proud."

The words were so coldly calculated that Sasuke almost didn't notice that calculation, that distinct poise that Neji had used to lay his web. He felt the anger rising within him again, just as it had when Neji had delivered his previous blow, so carefully phrased. _I didn't know that the Uchiha had a second son._

His fist clenched audibly in the empty car, the noise twisted and tense. And then Sasuke relaxed. Neji really was good at getting away, but Sasuke was better at chasing than the Hyuuga appeared to be.

"You like to see me angry, don't you?" he asked, sitting down so that Neji's back was half-turned toward him.

"I think it makes you more interesting," Neji replied patiently, as if talking to a particularly slow child. His position didn't change. It looked perfectly comfortable, one elbow against the back of the seat, free hand resting softly in his lap. He almost looked like he belonged, but Sasuke knew he didn't. Maybe he was the only one that knew, though---after all, the difference between what did and didn't belong had compacted itself to the point where it almost didn't exist. Had Neji listened to him, all those weeks ago on the porch when he'd said that the Hyuuga just didn't fit in?

"You think it'll make me leave you alone. It won't work, Hyuuga."

Neji scoffed and turned to look at him, the position no less awkward than his chosen facial expression, which was caught between irritation and surprise, though as usual barely constructed. "If you think that taking a shot at the greatest clan in Konoha will get you ahead, you're—"

"This isn't about that " Sasuke hissed, fingers aching from fisting in the material he'd found in his pockets. Neji raised an eyebrow and Sasuke mustered a sneer through his irritation, "Tch. I thought you would think this was about _you_."

"I'm not stupid, Uchiha. I doubt you'd bother chasing me down if it didn't have something to do with personal gain. It's about _you_."

Sasuke grunted and looked away, shoulders curling in as he crossed his arms and stared harshly at the cracked seating across the isle. He would have offered a rebuttal, but there was no real reason he could think of for this—this whim he'd taken on. He hadn't even thought twice about it, and that wasn't like him, not being sure of what he was doing. But Neji was there, a solid presence beside him that offered nothing, and Sasuke could feel himself being wrapped up in the whole thing just as he was wrapped up in the empire that his brother had created.

This was just a detour, though. A curiosity. Nothing so important than a few days' investigation couldn't sort out. Sasuke ignored the fact that he'd been entertaining Neji's mystery for more than just a few days, and shifted down slightly on the seat.

"Where are we going, anyway?"

As expected, Neji offered nothing.

---

"I don't know, Sakura-chan They were like, they were like---! Goonies."

"…_Goonies_?"

"Yeah…you know?"

"Naruto, I think you're thinking of the wrong film."

Naruto rubbed his temples and fell back onto the couch, lamenting the fact that the way Sakura was staring at him now was not at all similar to how she'd been looking at him upon their previous meeting. In his dream. Not to mention the part about how she didn't seem to be getting the point, _at all_.

"Look, all I know is that Sasuke and Neji were having sex, and then I opened the door, and there were these two guys standing there, and they were unhappy, and they asked me all these questions---"

"Sasuke-kun and Neji _what_? " Sakura shrieked, her voice a good octave above anything Naruto had ever heard before. He realized the misspeak slowly, and hastened to correct it in the only way that he had ever found effective.

"No. Nonononononono! That was my dream. I mean. That was _in_ my dream. You were, too. Not having sex, but---in my dream. You see---I…can we just forget about that part? " Naruto's hands were in his hair by this point, and between trying to assure Sakura that a mental breakdown was not on the horizon and trying not to get eaten by his couch, he was having a bit of a time.

"Okay," Sakura breathed out, her stance stiff as she regarded Naruto almost like one would a ticking time bomb.

"Okay. So these men, they came in and they asked me all these questions that I didn't know the answers to," not that such an occurrence was abnormal, "and they looked all over the apartment, and in my room, and in Neji's room, and they _gave me a card_. That's why I called you."

"A card?"

"Yeah. They said, _Why don't you give us a call when Neji gets back? We were hoping to surprise him._"

Sakura was snapping her fingers and holding out her hand, like Naruto was supposed to know what the gesture meant. Then, her eyes rounded and she jutted her head forward slightly, as if to enunciate the begging and air-grabbing.

"Well! Let me see it, moron!"

Naruto produced it like a man in need of a good fix produces cash, and Sakura snatched it away just as quickly. Naruto watched her read the business card carefully, though her expression was blank for the most part. She walked over to the only light that was turned on in the room---a small lamp that emitted a dull, yellow glow, and the only thing that didn't add to Naruto's splitting headache---and studied it for a few moments more.

"This is bad, Naruto," she said, turning back to him. Her expression was worried, and when Naruto met her eyes, they expressed that concern. "Did you know that those guys were yakuza?"

"They were Neji's cousins!" Naruto defended, crossing his arms as his mind began to race. He was conjuring up images of _The Godfather_ and bloody horse heads before he realized that these people were _Japanese_ and there weren't any horses around for miles and miles. It soothed him slightly, but didn't begin to abate his growing anger.

After a moment of careful contemplation, Naruto looked up.

"That bastard!" he shouted, looking as affronted as he could possibly manage without causing himself more pain.

"Naruto," Sakura said tightly, looking as if she were about to launch into some tirade. There was a knock on the door, though, quite suddenly—three quick and precise raps. Sakura looked startled. Naruto grabbed his head and would have ran around the living room in agitated circles if his right leg hadn't been asleep.

"Oh shit, they're back!"

"Calm down," Sakura sighed, slipping the card Naruto had handed to her into her back pocket as she moved to the door. She was about to open it when Naruto hissed at her to look through the peep hole, a command which she blithely ignored.

"Oh—hello." Naruto heard Sakura say, though her body was blocking whoever was standing behind the door. "May I help you?"

Naruto groaned and wilted at Sakura's sudden lack of foresight. He would have thought that at least _she_ would be smart enough to turn a headhunter away. But no. She had to be polite. She wasn't even that polite to _him_.

Limping up behind her and peeking over her shoulder, Naruto's expression changed from one of anticipated horror to confusion. Instead of the two aristocratic men he'd been faced with before, there was a single _thing_ smiling and sparkling in sunlight that was slowly waning due to clouds gathering on the horizon. It—the thing—glowed at Sakura and completely ignored Naruto, who somehow couldn't stop staring at its two massive eyebrows.

"Yes you may—! If you could! My name is Rock Lee and I'm looking for a friend. He was supposed to meet me somewhere but must have forgotten."

The voice was _booming_. And what the hell was a Rock Lee?

Naruto poked his head under Sakura's arm and squinted threateningly at the guy—the it. He wasn't having the blinds pulled over his eyes anymore. If this guy was looking for Neji, he was getting tied to one of the kitchen chairs and interrogated by the might of Chinese water torture. Naruto had a how-to book.

"Who's asking?" he gruffed.

"...Rock Lee," Sakura said out of the corner of her mouth, elbowing Naruto in the stomach. "What's your friend's name, Rock-san?" she said courteously to the boy, who seemed to be eyeing her with a certain amount of awe.

"Oh, just Lee, please. I couldn't have a fine young woman such as yourself at so great a verbal distance! His name is Neji, and we were meeting to spar but—" and here, he sidestepped a sudden tackle-attempt from Naruto, never taking his eyes off of Sakura, "as I said, he never showed. I asked around and was directed to this general area which, if you don't mind me saying, is a little bit in poor taste for my friend, but I suppose he _is_ under some strange circumstance—is he all right?" The Eyebrow Monster said with pause in Naruto's direction. Naruto could _hear_ Lee sparkling at him, but was currently hanging over the porch railing and trying to regain his breath.

"He's fine," Sakura said offhandedly. "Actually, it's rather coincidental that you showed up today, Lee-san. Why don't you come in? I'll make us some breakfast and we can talk. This is Naruto, by the way," she made a vague gesture to Naruto, who was holding his stomach and glowering behind Lee, "he's Neji's roommate."

"Oh, wonderful!" cried The Grinch That Stole Sakura.

"What Don't let the fuzzy eyebrows in!" Naruto wailed just as the two disappeared into his apartment.

---

They exited the subway at the edge of the city, though they'd changed lines so many times Sasuke wasn't entirely sure _which_ edge of the city it was. He had been convinced for a time, if not consciously, that the subway never really ended. It wasn't, he had thought, like the veins of the circulatory system, turning and twisting back on itself but always contained within one single body, though this was very much true. It suddenly put things into perspective for him---made him realize exactly where the boundaries to his world lay.

When they boarded a train, Sasuke registered just how much wider the scope of Neji's own world was. He didn't hesitate though, in following the Hyuuga up the steps, in sitting across from him in the empty car.

Sasuke hadn't been on an actual train since he was a boy. It made him remember just how much he hated the subway, and that part of him was enjoying this little excursion was slightly aggravating.

"You never told me where we're going," Sasuke said, watching Neji slowly relax into the atmosphere. Each time they'd stepped into the harsh lighting of a new terminal, Neji had thrown furtive glances like daggers about him, a startled and skittish cat. Sasuke could feel edginess not only in the other boy's silence, but simply through the tension that seemed to hang about him in heavy curtains. But Neji seemed to fit into this changing world like the moon in a cloudless sky.

"It's a long ride," Neji said, having apparently accepted the fact that Sasuke would be traveling with him. You might want to sleep.

"No entertainment from you, then."

"So the Uchiha _does_ learn."

"Tch," Sasuke snorted, lips curling, "they do call me a genius."

"You were bred to be a genius," Neji muttered softly, his eyes looking past Sasuke and into a widening vista that they were swiftly cutting their way through. His tone was solemn, and held as much emotion as Sasuke had ever heard from Neji, even when angry. "Don't act as if it's something to be proud of."

"And what were you bred for, Neji?" Sasuke asked, keeping his gaze even and refusing to allow the slow lick of flame inside him to ignite at those words. Neji was the pristine counterpart of what he never had been; collected deep into the very pit of him, a block of sheer ice. Sasuke wondered if there was a phantom river flowing beneath that hard layer. Fording such a thing would be treacherous—already had been, but Sasuke, as always, found himself well-equipped.

"Obedience," Neji said after a long moment, and then he turned away from Sasuke and became a marble statue, gaze directed toward the blossoming scenery.

"Tch," Sasuke whispered again, unable to pull his eyes away for a long moment, incapible of offering what should have been a cold shoulder.

When he shifted and looked out his own window, it was to find himself face to face with a world that he had never really been a part of. The city had given way to a countryside full of green, blossoming orchards that stretched until they disappeared into a backdrop of deep mountains and blue, blue sky. On the horizon, clouds were growing in peaks of white down, each one building upon itself as if exponentially. Sasuke had never seen colors so vivid outside of a painting.

The difference between this and the life that was ruled by the mechanisms of the subway, of time and order, seemed to sink into Sasuke slowly and achingly. Despite the rows of trees that fled into rice paddies, what was contained here as they broke away was nothing but a natural order. It was freeing, lighter than all the pieces of the city pushing down on him, reminding him what he had to be and what strength he had to uphold. He sighed, and for the first time the gesture actually felt as if it relieved something. Not everything, but at least those constraints that he had not put on himself.

The setting became more rural. Houses became scattered, paved roads turned to dirt. The sky further filled with clouds and there was a promise of rain. The mountains and forests that had once been only background took on a shape sharp enough for Sasuke to distinguish without aid of imagination. He realized he'd fallen asleep only when the train jolted to a stop (much more abrupt than those of the subway line) and Neji brushed past him in a whisper of purpose and cloth.

What should have been a station was nothing more than a platform of dark brown wood and a single pole supporting a softly glowing lamp. Steps descended to a dusty road that crossed the tracks and curved away between rice paddies parallel with a dark, lush forest in the near distance. Sasuke couldn't bring himself to scorn it all, and the alien qualities seemed to relax rather than disturb him. He fell into step alongside Neji as they set off down the road in an almost companionable silence.

When their destination became apparent in a small house flanked by rice paddies, Sasuke felt something in his chest tighten. He wasn't sure if it was apprehension or a response to how picturesque the place looked with the last rays of sun glancing off the water of the fields through the clouds; either way, Sasuke disapproved. He was neither an anxious nor sentimental person, and following Neji as he frolicked through the countryside would not change that.

"What is this, Hyuuga?" he asked finally, lagging slightly behind as Neji kept his pace. An archway over the road read _Hyuuga_, and Sasuke was stricken with the fleeting thought that Neji might be turning himself in. But to what? He still didn't really know.

"I don't know," Neji replied in a thoughtful tone, "It looks like a house."

"Fuck you,"

"No, really," the Hyuuga persisted, throwing Sasuke a look that he couldn't decipher. It was almost playful, and the Uchiha suddenly realized with that look just how much Neji had relaxed. Neji's mouth was no longer drawn in such a hard line, his eyes didn't flickered about them like a butterfly caught in a jar, his shoulders held only an arrogant rigidity as opposed to one that was on edge.

Smirking softly, Sasuke glanced away before he could be caught staring, and they continued through the archway.

From what Sasuke could see, the house was large, but not elaborate. It was open to the cooling day and a line of laundry was strung across the porch, behind which lay a row of noren in dyes of deep hues across the open doorways. Light glimmered from behind windows and a soft line of smoke found its way to the sky from the roof.

Someone was standing on the veranda hanging laundry. A slim, slightly stooped figure whose details Sasuke could hardly make out through the distance, she worked methodically, absorbed in her task.

They came closer and she turned at the sound of their tread. Dressed in a dark kimono with her hair pulled back into a sensible bun, she reminded Sasuke of the women in old cultural paintings. The lines in her face, though, spoke of years of hardship not found in such an elegant setting.

"Oh," he heard her whisper as Neji stopped abruptly several meters from the house. Hands came to cover the woman's mouth in a portrait of surprise, and Sasuke could feel Neji waver slightly beside him as he came to a stop.

"Tadaima," Neji said. His voice suddenly sounded very worn, and Sasuke tore his eyes away from the woman to find Neji bowed at a 90-degree angle, hair fallen over his shoulders and hiding his face from view.

She was off the porch in a matter of seconds, had descended the steps so quickly and gracefully that Sasuke wondered if he had assumed her elderly in error. She drew closer though, and her face was clearly that. Her hands were wrinkled as they pulled Neji straight and cupped his face in order to see his eyes, in order to see the smile that was almost there, _almost_ visible. Sasuke did not look away, though he felt like an interloper.

"Okaerinasai, Neji-kun," she said in a voice that sounded like clouds breaking open. Then she kissed Neji's bandaged forehead and turned her eyes to Sasuke.

---

"Do you know how to cook, Sasuke-kun?" Neji's grandmother asked him later, after Neji had disappeared into the rice fields as the clouds rolled and dry thunder shook the sky. Sasuke looked up from the portrait he had been staring at for the last three minutes and nodded once.

"Some."

"Aa," she said, eyeing him with a knowing look as she dried her hands on the apron she'd just tied. She fit into the home as if she were an accessory in it and not its master. "Mikoto must have taught you, hm?"

Sasuke's eyes, which had once again been wandering, snapped to the woman's face. Her gaze was cool, but not trained like Neji's was. It was open, but calculating, yet beneath that careful discernment, warm. Despite himself, Sasuke felt his body relax. "You know my mother?"

"A bit," she replied, walking over to where Sasuke had placed himself after stepping out of the genkan—not far away, a stranger.

Her eyes stayed on his face for a moment before she stopped next to the table and picked up the framed picture that had so kept his attention. "She was from the east side. My boys knew her growing up... she's only a few years younger, I think. A smart girl." The gaze she had fastened to the picture was almost misty, and it preempted Sasuke's surprise at her knowledge of his family. It made him question just how much his mother had not told him about Neji's, but that thought he pushed aside for what information he could gain _here_.

"Neji's parents," he stated after a moment, watching her expression. It was easy to tell; Neji was hardly an original creature. Most of his features had been stolen from his father, but were softened in the son. His nose was his mother's, his slight frame. Even the pale skin that could have been naturally gained from anyone in the Hyuuga line had been lightened further by the woman standing next to the Hyuuga male (white-eyed, but not stony-faced).

Sasuke though, had been most interested in the imprint of a helix on both their foreheads.

"Mm." Neji's grandmother put the picture down carefully. When she looked up, her gaze was a bit more Hyuuga, brown where it should have been white. "I'm surprised Neji brought you here, Uchiha Sasuke."

"He didn't," Sasuke admitted with no sense of remorse. Despite the fact that he felt very much on enemy ground, he had followed Neji for a reason, even if it had been half-baked.

"Hyuuga is a closed world that draws people in unwillingly, sometimes. But it's a dangerous place even if you really want it, Sasuke-kun."

"I've been warned to mind my own business," Sasuke said with a slight smirk. Warnings were just challenges in disguise, and Sasuke didn't back down from a fight.

A moment passed and she smiled. One hand worn soft from years of use found Sasuke's cheek and patted it in a motherly way. It was so familiar and expected that Sasuke didn't move away.

"My grandson doesn't mince words, but if he really wanted you gone, you wouldn't be here. Now, come help me get this dinner started. They'll be out until after dark, but I'd like to eat before I'm too old to enjoy it."

---

The house was quiet and dark, and Neji's ears rang in the silence after the crash of rain outside. Even after his grandfather had gone in and to bed, Neji'd found himself standing on the edge of a field staring into the blue darkness as the sound of thunder rumbled in the distance, arms limp at his sides as he felt the sweat from several hours' planting soak into him.

It had begun to rain and he'd picked his way quickly through the fields, not fast enough to avoid being soaked through. Drops fell and collided like those of a waterfall, and when Neji had arrived on the veranda, his chest was heaving from the convergence of the storm. He could feel the stillness of the house behind him, the flowing, painful cacophony before him—and suddenly it all seemed far too muddled as to where he was supposed to fit within it.

The feeling had passed as he allowed the water to drip from his clothing and onto the cool, dark wood beneath his feet. He'd thought of the house and of the silence that was safe for a short time, but most of all he thought of favors and debts, and the price of freedom. He'd gotten what he'd come for, but he wondered not for the first time if the path he'd chosen was truly a divergence from Fate.  
Shadows moved as a breeze accompanying the rain shifted through the house, stilling Neji's bare feet and halting the breath in his throat. Even here, safety was an illusion, but one that Neji would abide by for a time.

The room that his grandmother had prepared lay behind a sliding shouji door. Neji paused outside to listen for anything that may indicate awareness from beyond, but heard nothing of the shallow breathing of the room's only occupant. Sasuke.

He slid the door open and closed it behind him, a ghost in a house that had never been his own, but had welcomed him all the same, even when it shouldn't have. Neji's clothes shifted wetly, belying his presence as he crossed the room to where Sasuke lay asleep on one of two futons.

Dropping silently to his knees beside the other, Neji pulled wet hair where it stuck in ringlets to his face and held it away as he leaned in to study the Uchiha's features, unconstrained by a smirk that was usually all too prevalent. Sasuke had spent all evening with his grandmother in this house alone, an allowance Neji had made consciously though it had worried him slightly at the time. There was nothing he could have done to prevent the exposure—he'd needed to speak to his grandfather, and Sasuke had insisted on following him here.

With his free hand, Neji traced the features of Sasuke's face mere centimeters above the skin. He could feel the unnatural heat that the other boy seemed to emit from such a close distance, and as his fingers paused over Sasuke's lips, Neji recalled their press on his skin. In memory, he felt them. His skin heated in the darkness, an odd contrast to the cold clothing. Sasuke was beautiful in a pride-infused way. A force that demanded Neji step up and parry each move piece for piece. Made Neji _want to_.

But Sasuke couldn't really be following him through worlds as dangerous as these for some simple gratification, Neji thought. He seemed too intelligent for that, and as Neji had known similarly in his brother, too motivated to waste his time. Unwilling to abandon his previous assessment but confused by Sasuke's own actions, Neji let out a sharp breath.

"What do you want with me, Uchiha...Sasuke," he said to the silent room. Sasuke shifted as if troubled in his sleep, turning so that Neji's hand was almost cupping his face though he offered no answers.

Frowning, Neji stood and walked to the open window. A wind thick and heavy waxed over his damp skin and some mystery rumbled its warning in the distance. A line of lightning lit his face, but Neji refused to give into the temptation to see what such a glow would do to Sasuke's complexion.

Irritated with himself for dwelling on such things, Neji closed the window and pulled at his shirt, soaked heavy. It dropped with a thick _plunk_ on the tatami near Sasuke's head, but Neji felt no worry over waking him. His breathing had shifted moments earlier, indicating that he had already been roused.

It didn't stop Neji from continuing. His shorts followed, then boxers before Neji draped the wet clothing over a line strung the length of the room. He felt his skin prickle as it dried and then grow hot under Sasuke's sudden gaze. When he'd finished, Neji slipped into the prepared futon, his naked skin warming at the friction. He closed his eyes, feeling stormy and agitated as he catalogued the way his body was reacting to Sasuke's eyes. The Uchiha shifted nearby, movements sounding oddly wanting, and Neji turned away from him, toward the wall.

"Go to sleep," he whispered. He thought he felt the ghost of Sasuke's fingers brush over his exposed arm like a lover's caress, but whatever answer was offered there was lost to unconsciousness and the dull ache of a need left undefined.

---

"Anyway, so," Lee said the next day over lunch, one hand stretched out across the table to dip into the half-gone bag of french fries, "Gai-sensei was standing at the end of this alley, his arms around these three roughed-up kittens with this...this gang of hooligans cowering in a corner, and he just...let the boys go. He said he'd felt a change in their _spirits_. It was beautiful."

Sakura nodded cluelessly, but Naruto was done smiling and nodding at this crazy. He was pretty sure he'd already gotten whiplash from the night before, and had probably slipped a disc too, what with how many games of twister he'd played—and lost. Naruto was really, really over it.

"These are really good," Lee said, waving a few fries around, "I've never had fast food before."

They sat in an awkward silence for a few moments more. Naruto looked at Sakura, still managing to keep herself prim and proper with her hands folded neatly in her lap, and she looked back at him, eyes speaking of some unidentified pain. Crowds moving to and fro throughout the food court surged around them, providing background noise for Lee's merry munching.

"So," Naruto grunted, "about Neji."

"Oh—oh, he knows what he's doing, I do hope " Lee responded optimistically, "Tenten would have notified me if he'd shown up over east. He's probably just moved on..." At this point, Lee's voice dropped slightly, and Naruto detected a hint of worry.

"What," he said, putting both hands on the table and leveling with the eyebrow monster, "that bastard owes me rent." Not to mention an explanation. And there was also that tiny fact that was slowly becoming more and more apparent to Naruto. He kind of, _might_ have, enjoyed Neji's brand of silent company. Or had at least gotten used to it.

"Neji's gotten himself into a bit of a position with his family, as I'm sure you've seen," Lee responded, "He was trying to...well, I'm sure it's hard, anyway."

"Trying to...?" Sakura asked.

"Neji never tells me much of anything," Lee said, for the first time seeming not so candid, "If I haven't heard from him in a week, I will find him." Something burned in Lee's eyes, and Naruto swallowed.

"Err," he said, "and where are you planning on staying for a _week_?"

Both Sakura and Lee looked pointedly at him. Some cold chill seemed to have snuck up Naruto's back and was sinuously stroking his spine. One eye twitched.

"Oh, _hell_ no."

---

Neji and Sasuke stayed three days at that house.

When they weren't bent over water and mud transplanting the fledgling rice to a more permanent home, they slept on the veranda or looked for cooler places beneath the line of trees in the distance. Mostly, they disappeared from one another, but found each other again during the hottest part of the day. Neji, lying in the shade of a giant oak or Sasuke stretched out along the brook that made its way through the hills at the back of the property. Neji wasn't sure how it had happened, but he'd slowly found himself acclimating to Sasuke's presence.

"He's never said it," Sasuke said during their last full day visiting, "but silences are heavier than words in my family."

"Hn," Neji grunted softly in understanding, not quite wanting Sasuke to continue, but not wanting him to stop, either. He was on his back with his face under the shade of a tree watching clouds drift quickly overhead. Sasuke was mere centimeters away, looking up at the sun. Neji wondered if that was the difference between them, and closed his eyes. He wasn't sure when they'd begun talking to one another.

"Tch," Sasuke said after a moment, "like preaching to the choir."

"It's important that your family expects something of you," Neji said, pressing the back of his hand to the bandage at his forehead. "When there's no one there to expect growth it's like..."

"What." Sasuke's retort was quick, surprised. Almost agitated, and Neji felt the line of his own mouth draw long and blank. Sasuke hadn't expected him to reply, hadn't liked that answer.

"It's like being dead," he continued anyway.

There was a rustle in the grass as Sasuke moved, and Neji felt a shadow slide across his face.

"What happened to your parents, Neji..."

"They died," Neji said, feeling his throat tighten. He didn't open his eyes.

"I asked what happened."

"In my family, you owe a life debt to the main house," Neji said slowly, feeling the soft whisper of Sasuke's breath. "They paid."

"No wonder you're such a bastard," Sasuke said after a moment. The words were as carefully chosen as the tone, and Neji was surprised to feel his heart crash against the bars in his chest at that. He was glad that there was no pity there, only a whispered sense of understanding.

"What's your excuse."

Sasuke snorted and blew his dark bangs up in a puff of hot air, his expression exasperated. The strands landed back on his forehead softly, and Neji didn't resist the urge to slip his fingers up and brush them aside. His fingers were cool against Sasuke's too-hot skin, and though there was no look of surprise written on the other's face, his eyes widened minutely. Neji shot him a smug look.

"My brother. My father. Everything." It was an admission Neji had not expected to receive, but the words out of his own mouth had not really been commonplace, either.

"Not footsteps I would want to follow," Neji said after a moment, voice bordering on judgmental. Sasuke's eyes narrowed and his face contorted, distorting peace into anger.

"My father is the chief of police," he hissed.

"I know. He wasn't who I meant."

They sat in silence for a moment, Sasuke propped up on one elbow as he looked out across the landscape. Neji watched his features, soft, relaxed despite the conversation. And he suddenly realized what this was—conversation. He hadn't exchanged so many words with someone for years, and he knew he would be going back to that, back to the cage as soon as they left this place. A cage, even if it was of his own making.

"Why did you follow me here," Neji said.

Sasuke looked down, "I want to have sex with you," he said smoothly.

"And."

"And...I wanted to see what was making you run," Sasuke said after a minute, making the hesitation seem natural. A dark cloud drifted behind his head, and it took a moment for Neji to realize that Sasuke was leaning over him.

"Still putting the pieces together, aren't you,"

"Not for long, Hyuuga," Sasuke replied with a smirk, his expression borrowed from the devil. Neji pushed himself up, his eyes on the clouds though his face was near Sasuke's. Close enough to feel him, if Neji used his imagination.

"It's going to rain again," he said. Sasuke looked up and Neji caught him in that moment, slipped his fingers into Sasuke's hair and pushed up against him, their lips meeting between Sasuke's breath of surprise and his understanding. By the time Sasuke had slipped his tongue into Neji's mouth, Neji had pushed him into the grass and pinned him to the ground.

His heart was beating painfully in his chest, and though he was sure of what he was doing, Neji wasn't really sure _why_ he was doing it. Making things complicated. He didn't, after all, take detours.

But Sasuke's lips were firm beneath his own, the way he moaned softly, remorseless and all too wanting. Sasuke slipped his fingers up the back of Neji's shirt and then down, fingernails raking until he pushed his hands beneath the band of Neji's pants and grasped his ass. Hands strong and purposeful, Sasuke pressed Neji's hips against his own and arched up. They parted and Sasuke hissed with unrestrained delight as Neji threw his head back, hair having obscured his vision.

"You could have warned me," Sasuke said, though it sounded more like a purr.

Neji smirked and lowered his head, lips brushing Sasuke's moist ones as the Uchiha pressed a finger into the cleft of his ass. "I did," he gasped, just before it began to pour.

"Fuck—you _bastard_," Sasuke yelped, surprising Neji at how quickly he pulled away and yanked them both to their feet. As they sprinted between the rice paddies, rain pelting them both in the face, Sasuke looked back. "You did that on purpose—!"

Neji felt the line of his mouth soften at Sasuke's unguarded manner, his arousal slipping away with the rain as it was replaced by something else entirely. Even as he ran through the rain, the Uchiha was smiling.

They broke through a curtain of golden sunlight and came out on the other side, freedom painted in each feature, in every crevice that the rain found. For once, Neji was chasing Sasuke, though they both had the same destination. They arrived there breathlessly, stumbling onto the veranda only to slip off their muddy shoes and collapse into their own puddles.

"Asshole," Sasuke grumped again, though it sounded half-hearted at best. His fingers were trying to find skin beneath Neji's wet clothing.

Neji smirked and was about to issue a reply when the low murmur of a voice wafted through one of the open windows. It was curt and though low, had an edge to it that was distinctive enough not to be just a mere rumble. Neji's breath caught in his throat and he seamlessly and silently rolled to his knees, creeping over Sasuke and to one of the half-open sliding doors. Neji felt Sasuke's head lift, the Uchiha's body suddenly on guard like an animal with a nose for trouble. Neji's hand planted in the middle of his chest was the only thing that kept him from rising.

"What is it?" he asked.

"My uncle," Neji responded in a whisper, fingertips barely balanced on the wood of the outdoor hall. His heart was in his throat for a moment, and though there was nothing to focus on with the position he was in, Neji couldn't make his eyes see straight.

Sasuke, understandably confused and half-drawn, curled his fingers around Neji's wrist. "Neji..."

But Neji was up like a flock of birds, his movements sudden as the beat of wings against a previously still sky. The door felt brittle under his fingers as he pushed it open, and each sound, each movement was like a crash against his ears as he found his way rather blindly to the voices. Sasuke, he could feel behind him, a burning presence flickering steadily at his back.

What was he doing? He should be running. But he had to see this—had to face it.

All conversation stopped as Neji entered the room. His grandmother was standing with her back to him, hands clasped loosely before her, position erect as she looked calmly at her eldest son. She did not turn when Neji stopped a step behind her, but Neji's grandfather did. He looked particularly old standing next to Hiashi.

Hiashi, the man with the face of Neji's father. The face Neji's father had never gotten to wear.

It had been over a month.

"Neji," his grandfather said, the word sounding like regret.

"So our wayward prodigal son has returned," Hiashi said, and Neji could tell that he was attempting to keep his voice calm, his expression trained. One corner of his mouth flickered up, as if he found the situation amusing.

"I am not your son," Neji said. His knees felt like bending. His forehead ached for the floorboards, and at the same time, his back muscles shouted in rebellion. It was the same song his body sang whenever he found himself bowing before Hiashi, but this time, his body refused to bend. He should have been looking at the floor by this point.

"Nii-san's wet and muddy, Otou-san. I wonder what he's been doing since he's been gone," Hyuuga Hanabi said at her father's shoulder, voice and words too easy to misinterpret as innocent. Behind her stood two nameless, faceless Hyuuga that Neji recognized only because they were related.

"_On your knees_," Hiashi uttered.

Neji remained standing. Sasuke smirked audibly beside him, the expression loud in the chilling silence.

Hiashi took two heavy steps toward Neji before Neji's grandfather stepped between them. Neji, who had been prepared for violence, felt his eyes widen at the movement. Higure had been clan head once. Neji had not been reluctant to ask him for aid—he'd been almost frightened. Even though he'd received it, he'd never expected something like _this_.

"Not under this roof, Hiashi," he said. Hiashi seemed startled. "The law will handle this matter."

"That is not the way of this—" Hiashi lowered his voice, "you know that."

"There was a reason I retired from my position," Higure said. He looked tired, and placed a solemn hand on his only remaining son's shoulder. "You'd do best to remember that when next we meet."

Hiashi grunted, his cold eyes still fixed on Neji, who refused to waver under such a gaze. Pulling out of his father's grip, Hiashi motioned the three Hyuuga onlookers to follow him through the door.

The room was quiet as the sound of a motor rumbled through the floorboards.

---

The train ride back to the city had been silent. Unpredictably, Sasuke remained silent throughout the whole affair, though the expression on his face spoke more loudly than any words he could have. He was contemplative, deep in thought. Neji knew he was tying up loose ends, making some assumptions, filling in gaps.

It didn't much matter anymore, Neji supposed, at least not on the whole. He still wanted his secrets, though. Was afraid of Sasuke's understanding.

It was difficult to escape that, however. Sasuke _was_ intelligent, and perhaps already knew more than he had seen or heard from Neji. When they'd reached a point to part in the terminal, Sasuke had grabbed Neji's wrist, his gaze expressive and demanding.

"You'll stay at my apartment until we can file the paperwork necessary to get you under witness protection—"

"—I don't _need_ witness—"

"—at my house."

People had milled about them like rats in a sewer. Neji's gaze on Sasuke had been perfectly blank.

"Are you on something."

"My father's the chief of police."

"Are you _on_ something."

Sasuke had smirked. Neji had grimaced.

The Uchiha's apartment turned out to be to his liking. Everything was streamlined, sleek, had a place. It turned away from Neji's more traditional tastes, but he couldn't deny that it fit with Sasuke, that it fit in the city. A loft, the place was high and open, each room connected not by doors or walls, but by the absence of them. Neji took a look around, and returned to where he'd left Sasuke at the steps leading to the bedroom.

The tour was an amusingly false pretense for the both of them.

"Couch, or bed?" Sasuke asked, beginning to unbutton his shirt with a vaguely hidden expression.

"Bed," Neji replied, one eyebrow raising loftily, wondering how the Uchiha was going to play this. After all, they had been chasing each other in one form or another since their first meeting. There was no excuse now, no heated anger to blame their lust on, no alcohol in their systems or the teasing promise of rain.

Neji could see Sasuke's canines, though his expression was hardly a grin. Something darker than that, it made Neji's skin crawl and the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up in anticipation.

"Morning or night?"

"Evening." It was seven-thirty. There was no time like the present.

Sasuke smirked, dropping his shirt to the floor. He closed the space between them in two steps, and as Neji's eyes slipped closed, he felt Sasuke's teeth nip at his earlobe. Sasuke's fingers undid Neji's belt, then began unbuttoning his pants.

"Top, or bottom, Hyuuga?"

No response.

"Shall we begin?"

---

**Author's Notes:**  
The original line before typo correction: _"If you think that taking a shot at the greatest clan in Konoha will get you head, you're---"_ absolutely right.


End file.
